Portland Architecture

Following the Aqua Star upstream: a conversation with Buzz Gorder

BY LUKE AREHART

With its location near the confluence of two rivers, Portland has always been a natural location for floating homes. And while many floating homes along the Willamette or Columbia may be utilitarian, others have been designed by noted local architects, such as Robert Oshatz. Yet these projects also sometimes attract non-architects with design savvy in related professions, as is the case with the striking Aqua Star residence, which was sold last year and has been called iconic for its shiny aluminum cladding.

The nearly 3,000 square-foot, three bedroom Aqua Star residence was designed and built in 1984 by Buzz Gorder, a local designer and creative director focused on event-based exhibit spaces and products (whose clients include Nike), with assistance from Portland architect Larry Hart. Seen on the “Portlandia” TV show as well as HGTV’s “Extreme Homes,” its forms and voids are carved out using high-grade corrugated and anodized aluminum. The home exists less as a place of whimsy, and more as a place of family and soul.

For years it has occupied a site along the Willamette River south of downtown, near the Oaks Amusement Park.  Prior to its move upstream to a new site on the Columbia River, Gorder designed a renovation for its new owner. Despite being moved, the home seems so knitted to its surrounding that they become one.

Recently I sat down with Buzz Gorder in hopes of learning about its striking façade and his initial design of the Aqua Star.

Portland Architecture: What was your thought process when putting pencil to paper to design this piece of architecture?

Buzz Gorder: The first intention was to create a nice piece of sculpture: some shape that really would reflect a lot of where we live and what we're doing here in the Northwest. By using the anodized aluminum, we wanted to pick up as much light as possible because this material changes colors throughout the day. When the sun is coming up and going down, all the downtown buildings turn gold, and the reflection is like gold bars coming down this river right at us. The house was always in a midst of color changes especially in different seasons.

When we first drew the plan out, I put Aqua Star on it because it's kind of like naming a product. The name's got to reflect what the product delivers. That's kind of exciting. Everybody said, "Aqua Star." I said, "Yeah, man. It's on the water, and it's bright like a shining star.”

A recent visit to the Aqua Star (Luke Arehart)

I think every morning, you wake up here, you feel good. It kind of brings you alive and makes a good direction for the day to start.

How did you continue to explore that space you were creating in plan and elevation?

I was trying to combine the upper and lower spaces, so you don't feel like you've gone somewhere else separate from the main spaces. When you walk around upstairs it gathers you up there from down here by just leaving the interior balcony and atrium open.

I felt like you don't have to live small to live in a tight space. You can still have the feeling of grandeur, and bigness. There’s room for our yearly 12-foot Christmas tree. I think of all the houses down here on the Willamette River, Robert Oshatz's Wave residence is probably the closest one that deals in expansive spaces. Some other homes can feel a little bit like you're on a limited flow.

I drew the design for this house at three in the morning. I knew what I wanted it to kind of to look like, and it was about 90% true to plan in final construction when it was done.

Gorder's original Aqua Star drawings (Luke Arehart)

How did you choose this material?

I grew up in the Midwest, in Minnesota. When farmers built their silos, they’d use a barrel vault between them. They built the barrels for the Aqua Star in a little town in Illinois, 40 miles outside of Chicago. I called them up and told them the size I wanted. Coincidently, we had a semi-truck back in Chicago, at a national sporting goods show with Nike and on the way back, we had enough room in the truck to pick them up and bring them back to Portland. They were made in 15-inch pieces, and they earned a patent on the process of how they slid them together.

In relation, we developed and built a 10,000 square foot exhibit for Nike. It was made all out of stainless, anodized, and corrugated aluminum. It was a wild material choice because nobody was using any of that stuff except [Frank] Gehry.

The Aqua Star seen from above (Cascade Sotheby's International Realty)

How did you create the form?

The radii are all kind of soothing. When you're in here, you just feel how the radius informs the different forms and programs inside. Where they're fluted, they're made that way to roll.

The whole house is sitting perpendicular to the flow of the river. In the house, it's at a 33 degree angle. It creates all these really neat little indentations, like where our tree is potted outside. As you go around the house, the form comes in and comes out. So, inside and outside, it creates all these neat and dynamic spaces. It creates the same shape that shapes the house, creates the shape for the inside. And it creates all these kinds of neat areas, too, for sculpture or whatever.

We skirted the house with the same material so it kind of looked like it's sitting on the water with all the metal. Some floating homes have a beautiful top deck, but you see all the structure underneath it, that’s where we skirted it; so, it looks like it's something that would move/float on the water. When you see it on the water, the way it reflects the water, it seems like it belongs here.

The Aqua Star puts residents right on the water (Cascade Sotheby's International Realty)

Any Aqua Star moments you especially recall?

We've entertained the Flying Angels twice, both times when they flew in Portland. The guy that did the airshow asked me if we could have a party for the Blues down here because they wanted somewhere unique. We picked them up downtown in our old antique speedboat, brought them down here, and then they had a catered party.

When Robbie Knievel jumped in Portland to beat his dad's record, my company had the opportunity to build the jump because it had to be brought out onto the track. The minute he did his jump, it had to be moved away. We had to build it like an exhibit. The Knievels ended up staying down here twice.

Its ribbed aluminum helps Aqua Star a beacon absorb and refract light (Luke Arehart)

If you were to present this design in architecture school, what would your opening thesis be?

Don't be afraid to express yourself. Never hold the pencil too tightly. When you squeeze the pencil, your brain squeezes. You've got to have light hands; everything comes together with light hands. Like when writers experience writer's block sitting there looking at that blank piece of paper: just let her go, man.

That's the way this house started out being a freeform, thinking about light and spaces, and then putting an envelope over them, capture all these spaces with neat light and a great shape over the top.

This house is about light, water, and structure because there's really no land. It's a different palate, you're dealing with reflection and structure. It's a little unique in that you don’t necessarily take the land into consideration.

 

 

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Emporium uncovered: visiting the renovated J.K. Gill Building

Lobby of the renovated J.K. Gill Building (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If you're like me, the name J.K. Gill is both familiar and unfamiliar.

When I was growing up in Oregon in the 1980s, the company had about 30 stores across four western states and was a familiar presence in malls and on main street around the state. By that time, the longtime family business had been sold and its longtime flagship, downtown at SW Fifth and Stark, was already in the process of being rented out. But for a few generations of Oregonians, the company name remains a memory.

A 1980 J.K. Gill television commercial (via YouTube)

 
What I never knew about J.K. Gill was what a huge presence that flagship store and building were: a cultural hot spot even. You might even say it was Portland's top bookstore before the arrival of Powell's City of Books. And J.K. Gill may have started out as a book and stationery store in late 19th century Portland, but it grew to an emporium of musical instruments, office furniture, and much more.

In the early 20th century, it was even the kind of place that visiting celebrities like Duke Ellington and Nat "King" Cole made appearances at. Ellington appeared there just two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

 

Duke Ellington at Gill's, 1941 (Ray Atkeson, via Thomas Robinson)

Ellington with Jack R. Moore's Edmund Cusson (ACME/Oregon Historical Society)

Last year, after being known as the Gladys McCoy Building since 1998, during which time it served as headquarters for the Multnomah County health department, this circa-1922 building completed a renovation designed by SERA Architects for owner/developer Urban Renaissance Group and was rebranded as the J.K. Gill Building for its original occupant. I'm late to the party in visiting, mostly due to the pandemic. But touring the space a few days ago, I marveled at its simple interior beauty.

Obviously there is much uncertainty about the future of the office. Over the past year during the pandemic, millions of workers have realized they prefer working from home, and today's technology allows for that seamlessly. At the same time, something is lost when we never come together in person. Studies show that over 85 percent of office workers don't want to return to a five-day-a-week presence, but that only a small minority want to work from home all the time. The average work/home preference going forward, according to surveys, is 2.5 days a week. That will likely mean that offices are increasingly devoted to meeting spaces and flexible workstations over cubicles and personalized desks. Yet office buildings that cater to creativity, with plenty of natural light and wide-open interior spaces have a leg up, especially if their locations are high-density and close to other attractions like parks, shops and restaurants. That makes the J.K. Building well-positioned. It's just that the building has not been a commercial office building before. It's taken time to give it a proper facelift. It's been hiding in plain sight.

For two years beginning in about 1999, I worked around the corner from this building and, despite passing it often, didn't pay it much attention. The clerestory windows were covered up, and there was no sense of transparency. And in the two decades since, I'd thought about the building even less. Viewed from outside, it's what you might call a fabric building: handsome, and a positive contributor to its neighborhood, with a dignified Commercial style that adds decorative classical touches at its parapet. Yet it also doesn't call attention to itself.

What's exceptional about the J.K. Building, though, is not how it looks from the outside but how it feels inside. That's especially true on the ground floor, where a huge two-story volume with massive cylindrical columns fluted at their tops add up to a grand, large volume of space that's full of light. Upstairs, the columns continue, giving this building a robust quality.

Upstairs at the J.K. Gill Building (Brian Libby)

There's a kind of paradoxical quality to the columns, in fact: whereas normally interior columns just feel like obstructions of sorts, these ones have a commanding presence. I realize it may sound a bit silly, or even paradoxical. But at least for me, there was something about the added girth of the columns that made them an attraction, even though they must take up rentable space and certainly interrupt one's view across these spaces.

Maybe it's also their cylindrical form and the way they angle at the top: they perhaps make the space feel a bit more classical, even like a public building. Obviously an emporium of office supplies, books and other ephemera is not a courthouse or a concert hall. I'm not saying the J.K. Gill building is the Acropolis. Yet it was more than I expected it to be, and that's because of the light, volume the columns inside.

The J.K. Gill's top floor is unique. Tucked behind the building's parapet, it has hardly any windows at eye level (mostly just clerestories) and not beautiful cylindrical columns but ordinary blocky ones. Yet the redesign added a large skylight, which is more than enough to make this a compelling space of its own. My photo here (and a habit of upping the contrast in Photoshop) makes it look much darker than it really is.

 

Top floor of J.K. Gill (Brian Libby)

But let's go further back, to the beginnings of this building and, before that, the business itself.

Joseph Kaye Gill was born on August 13, 1841 in Yorkshire, England and immigrated with his family to the United States in 1854, settling initially in Worcester, Massachusetts. While studying at the Wilbraham Wesleyan Academy, Gill met his future wife, Frances Willson, whose father had platted the town Salem, Oregon. After their 1866 marriage, Gill was offered and accepted a teaching position at Willamette University due to his late father in law's influence, but Frances also asked him to oversee book sales at a Salem drugstore she co-owned. Enjoying the latter, he dropped the teaching position and opened with partner C.F. Yeaton the Gill & Yeaton bookstore in Salem in 1868, even constructing their own building for it. But after just one year, Yeaton dropped out and the store became known as J.K. Gill & Co.

 

Gill's original store in Salem (Urban Renaissance Group)

In 1870, former Portland mayor and local tycoon William S. Ladd, along with then-U.S. Senator Henry Corbett, approached Gill at the State Fair in Salem and suggested that he take over the Harris & Holman book business in Portland, which was the city's fourth-oldest. (Stephen J. McCormick’s Franklin Bookstore had been the earliest bookstore in Oregon, founded in 1851. Gill's new Portland store, first called Gill & Steele (for a partnership with George A. Steele) descended from a bookstore that started in the mid-1850s by Adam R. Shipley.) Gill agreed, selling his in Salem bookstore and moving to Portland in 1871.

Gill invested heavily in stock, and the store's variety and quantity was said to be on-par with East Coast book stores. They also sold stationery as well as teaching supplies such as globes, maps, charts, and crayons. There was a large music department that included sheet music, instructional books, and a wide variety of instruments such as pianos, organs, flutes, violins, and accordions.

The J.K. Gill store, as it became known again a few years later, occupied a variety of the city's best late-19th Century buildings. In 1872, it moved to the Holmes Building on First Avenue between Stark and Washington (it's since been demolished). In 1881, the company relocated to the newly-built Union Block on First between Oak and Stark, considered the finest office building in the city at the time (also since demolished). In 1893, J. K. Gill initially occupied the basement, first, and second floors of the original Masonic Temple on Third Avenue (also demolished) . In 1913 they leased the five upper floors of the adjacent Hamilton Building (still standing — I even used to work on the ground floor 20 years ago when the AIA chapter was located there).

By 1921, Gill's was booming. They were the largest distributor of books and stationery in the Pacific Northwest, and the designated state depository for school textbooks.

Before building the J.K. Gill Building, which was completed in 1922, the company spent a full year searching for an appropriate downtown site. Over the past decade following the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition, population growth and a real estate boom had pushed downtown further west, across Fifth Avenue to the west and Alder Street to the north. They chose this site at Fifth and Stark (now Harvey Milk Street).

 

Shortly after the building's 1922 completion (Oregon Historical Society)

 

Architecture firm Sutton & Whitney designed the nine-story building. Albert Sutton and Harrison Allen Whitney formed their partnership in 1912. Their state architectural licenses were only the 16th and 18th issued. Richard Ritz notes in Architects of Oregon that the firm produced “some of the most outstanding designs in the Northwest during the 1920s and 1930s.”

Their portfolio included buildings still standing today such as 1921's Ballou & Wright Company building at NW 10th & Flanders in the Pearl District, and 1922's Meier & Frank Warehouse at NW 14th and Irving (today home to the Vestas company). After Sutton's death the firm continued (as Sutton, Whitney & Aandahl) and went on to design 1928's Weatherly Building, the tallest structure in Southeast Portland (standing near the east end of the Morrison Bridge).

Albert Sutton, a Victoria, B.C. native born in 1867, practiced in Tacoma and San Francisco before relocating to Hood River, Oregon in 1910. Two years later he formed the partnership with Whitney, commuting from Hood River for the first for years and relocating to Portland in 1916. Sutton died in 1923, the year after the J.K. Gill Building was completed.

Harrison Whitney, was an Iowa native whose first job in Portland was working for the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition. He also co-founded the Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1911. Whitney worked for the city's most prestigious firm, Whidden & Lewis, before forming the partnership with Sutton, and after his partner's death, he lived on nearly four more decades, until 1962.

When the J.K. Gill Building opened in 1922, the ground-floor space was 22 feet high with a 4,500-square-foot mezzanine balcony. That's the vast space I encountered on last week's visit, enjoying how the clerestory windows had been uncovered for the first time since shortly after Gill's vacated the building. Back in the 1920s, a wide aisle separated the book department from displays of office equipment and commercial stationery on the ground floor. The upper floors housed an engraving department, displays of office furniture, and J.K. Gill's publishing and wholesale division. On the top of the building, books were packed and then sent down a twisting chute to several floors below where they were shipped out.

 

Ground floor of J.K. Gill, 1940s (Dede Montgomery)

The arrangement of the store interior changed over time. As described in its National Register application, later accounts of Gill's have mentioned a children’s floor, an extensive art supplies department in the basement, and an entire floor dedicated to sheet music. The store had a pianist who would play sheet music at a customer’s request so they would get an idea of what a piece sounded like. At one time, J. K. Gill was the largest retail outlet for sheet music in the Pacific Northwest.

After Joseph Gill’s 1931 death, the company continued to grow and opened additional stores in Oregon, Washington, and California. Ownership remained with the Gill family until 1970, when the firm was sold to Young & Rubicam. At that time, there were 11 J. K. Gill stores with $13.8 million in annual sales.

A 1967 sale at J.K. Gill (The Oregonian)

After selling the building in 1988, the J. K. Gill Company remained a tenant with reduced square footage until the downtown store closed in 1991. That's when the Multnomah County Health Department moved in, staying until last year.

Looking at photos of the Health Department space in the then-Gladys McCoy Building, it's easy to see how the bones and great features of the building were largely hidden away under drop ceilings, with clerestory windows blocked, and at the mercy of fluorescent lighting. That's the story of nearly every building that survived the mid to late-20 Century. Even so, particularly that ground floor of J.K. Gill's was also subdivided with several different partitions.

Yet the really compelling architectural experience comes from the space at its most wide-open. You can see that not only in my mediocre photos of the ground-floor space, but the renderings that SERA did for the building's new owner, Urban Renaissance Group. Of course a tenant can probably rebuild some of those partitions if they want, but I doubt that will happen. And I hope it doesn't.

I laugh at myself a little thinking of how in September of 2018 I visited the Expensify building just across the street from J.K. Gill and swooned at the renovated First National Bank building from 1916: its wide-open space, light and volume. It's hard to beat that magnificent space and its renovation by ZGF, but the ground floor of J.K. Gill is also quite memorable and impressive. Back in 2018, I called the building across the street a gem hiding in plain sight. Turns out the 1922 building facing it is another case. When you couple Sutton & Whitney's handsome original architecture with the cultural history of J.K. Gill's, one can only be glad that the combined story is coming to the surface again: not thanks to me, but thanks to the developers and architects who breathed new life into the structure.

 

 

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Happy 60th birthday, Memorial Coliseum

Veterans Memorial Coliseum (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In this unprecedented year, it's been easy to miss the 60th birthday of Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which opened in 1960. It would be even easier to miss that a years-in-the-making renovation for the arena has had to be placed on hold.

Yet the darker and more divisive things get, the more Portland needs this building: as a light-filled place for the community to come together. Writing this on election day, I'm reminded that The Coliseum's architecture is itself a symbol of transparent democracy: a secular cathedral.

And the restoration is still coming. It just may have to wait another year or two. But after 11 years since the Coliseum was first threatened with demolition, what's another?

Portland Memorial Coliseum, as it was originally known, arrived in a time of optimism. John F. Kennedy was elected president that year, NASA astronauts were about to blast into orbit for the first time, and the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

The city was also feeling ambitious. The Coliseum was seen as part of a broader venues push that included the ill-fated Delta Dome and intimations of an Olympic Games bid. Interstate 5 was also under construction, and so was the South Auditorium Urban Renewal Project at the edge of downtown. There's no denying that most of these developments were planned to take the place of neighborhoods where immigrants and minorities lived. But with the economy booming, both local and national leaders were in a mood for sweeping change.

Design

The Coliseum was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the legendary Chicago and New York-based firm that became America's premiere office-tower designer, be it the gorgeous Lever House in the 1950s or the One World Trade Center from 2014. Yet the firm was also a local one, having purchased the great Pietro Belluschi's firm after Belluschi's 1951 hiring as dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's architecture. SOM's Portland office, which operated from the mid-1950s until the early 1980s, designed not only the Coliseum but landmarks like the US Bancorp Tower and Autzen Stadium.

 

Rendering of Memorial Coliseum design (City of Portland)

 

SOM designed the arena to offer 360-degree views from its seating bowl to the outside. For most of the building's history, however, a retractable black curtain has blocked that view except for on a few special occasions like the annual Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade. I once watched the sun set over the entire downtown skyline from my seat at the top of the seating bowl during a Blazers exhibition game in 2010.

The building is also quite an engineering marvel. Despite being the equivalent of nearly three city blocks in size, the entire building is standing on just four columns. And the concrete seating bowl sits completely detached from the columns and the glass curtain walls that surround it.

Shortly after its completion, Memorial Coliseum was photographed by America's most acclaimed 20th century architectural photographer: Julius Shulman. His photos communicate the idea of the Coliseum as a kind of glass temple. Perched over the river and completely transparent, the Coliseum gleams. But Shulman wasn't the only talented photographer to turn his lens on the building. Seattle's Art Hupy took a series of nighttime pictures of the Coliseum that serve as an ideal complement to Shulman's daytime shots.

 

Memorial Coliseum in 1960 (Julius Shulman/J. Paul Getty Trust)

 

History

I can't believe I've written over 500 words so far and haven't even mentioned the Beatles or Blazers.

As the city's largest performance venue from its 1960 completion until the Rose Garden opened next door in 1996, Memorial Coliseum hosted the great musical acts of the mid-20^th century. Most notable was a 1965 concert by The Beatles. In the audience that day was also the legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who composed a poem called "Portland Coliseum," in which he referred to the building as "the new world auditorium."

In the 1960s and '70s, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones played there. In the 1970s, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan and Fleetwood Mac all took the Coliseum stage. In the 1980s I saw Van Halen, Rush, Sting and Billy Joel there (the latter was my mom's idea).

Naturally the lone contender that Beatles concert has for the all-time #1 event at Memorial Coliseum would be the Portland Trail Blazers winning the 1977 NBA championship there. This was the most joyous moment in our city's history, as a wave of pandemonium overtook the city.

 

 

"It was like the fall of Rome, the opening of the West and the discovery of atomic power," Robert Olmos and Steve Erickson wrote in a front-page June 6, 1977 Oregonian article. "The fall of Rome because Philadelphia 76er coach Gene Shue’s empire collapsed...The opening of the West because when the horn sounded ending the game, 12,951 fans stomped, cheered, cried and stampeded onto the court where the Trail Blazers had just made history. The discovery of atomic power because...well, you should have been there...A stranger in town would have thought Portland had gone mad. He would have been right. Blazermania had become a reality.”

A second NBA championship was won there in 1990 by the Detroit Pistons over the Blazers. Hall of Fame players like Detroit's Isaiah Thomas and Portland's Clyde Drexler competed in that series before Vinnie Johnson's championship-winning buzzer-beater at the Coliseum in Game 6. Two years later, the Coliseum hosted the NBA Finals for a third and final time, with Chicago winning two of three games in Portland before clinching back at Chicago Stadium in Game 6.

Two other basketball games at Memorial Coliseum were part of sports history. First, the 1965 Final Four was played there, won by UCLA as part of its 11-championship dynasty under head coach John Wooden.

And in 1992, the first ever "Dream Team" — a United States Olympic team comprised of professional players — played its debut game at Memorial Coliseum, as part of the Tournament of the Americas, a qualifier for the Barcelona Olympic Games. I was there that day in the audience with my dad as the United States defeated Cuba by 79 points.

Sports and music weren't all. How about Evel Knievel? He made one of his largest indoor jumps here. Or on a more serious front, two of the most world's most admired leaders of the past half century also spoke here: the Dalai Lama and Barack Obama. Not only do their names rhyme, but on this election eve, they couldn't be any more different than the incumbent of the past four years.

Demolition Threats and Protections

In 2009, the Coliseum was nearly demolished when Mayor Sam Adams and Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson announced a plan to build a new minor-league baseball stadium for the Portland Beavers next to the Rose Garden (now the Moda Center). The Beavers' longtime home, Providence Park, was being converted from a multi-purpose stadium to a soccer stadium, as part of the Timbers' joining Major League Soccer. After citizen opposition, Adams abandoned the Coliseum-demolition plan and sadly, a number of suburban municipalities explored for a minor-league stadium sight did not pan out, causing the team to move.

Meanwhile, the Coliseum was accepted to the National Register of Historic Places, giving it an additional (but not unbreakable) layer of protection. About that time, the name was altered from Memorial Coliseum to Veterans Memorial Coliseum, spearheaded by veterans who helped fight to save the building from demolition. (I respect and admire veterans but personally prefer the original name.)

 

Memorial Coliseum in 1960 (Art Hupy)

 

Adams and Prosper Portland (then known as the Portland Development Commission) then led a Stakeholder Advisory Committee to determine a new use for Memorial Coliseum, but the committee was being asked to determine single uses for a busy multi-purpose arena hosting over 100 events a year.

Eventually, the Adams administration moved forward with a proposed renovation of just over $30 million, but the plan was pulled from a planned City Council vote and shelved, after which Adams left office.

His successor, Mayor Charlie Hales, commissioned a third-party economic study that confirmed the Coliseum's value as a mid-sized venue that otherwise doesn't exist in the city. The study found that a renovation would pay for itself in increased booking revenue for the arena, and would bring $2 billion over 20 years in economic impact. Yet Hales too left office before further action was taken.

In 2015, Commissioner Steve Novick introduced to City Council a new plan, to tear down the Coliseum in order to build affordable housing. Yet both planning and affordable housing professionals found the Rose Quarter site to be insufficient for housing, given the lack of amenities and the island-like setting bounded by thoroughfares.

The Novick-led demolition plan did not move forward, but the threat was enough to see the Coliseum in 2016 receive another distinction when the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the VMC what's called a National Treasure, a distinction that has applied to less than 100 buildings and sites in the United States.

 

Blazers exhibition game at Memorial Coliseum, 2009 (Brian Libby)

 

The Plan Going Forward

So what now? Over the past three years, the city has spent about $5 million restoring the building. But that’s just a start. Since last year, the City of Portland has been taking steps toward a full-scale restoration.

As confirmed by Karl Lisle, who manages spectator venues for the City of Portland's Office of Management and Finance, the city hired acclaimed architecture firm Perkins + Will, and the firm is engaged in phase-one design work. But for now, the project is on hold until the pandemic is tamed and the funding situation becomes clearer. Money had been set aside, but that was before budgets took a hit citywide amidst the events of 2020.

As a co-founder of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, it’s frustrating to see the Coliseum finally about to be restored, only to face an unexpected eleventh-hour hurdle. On the other hand, the important thing is the City of Portland intends to restore the building. It's not to say the restoration is guaranteed to happen, yet the period in which we question the Coliseum's long-term survival seems to have—knock wood—ended. And rightly so.

Preserving a large arena like Veterans Memorial Coliseum goes against a lot of tradition. After all, no stadium or arena can be protected by its historical legacy. We tore down the Boston Garden and we tore down Yankee Stadium. Yet those buildings didn't have a reason to be, a role to play, whereas the Coliseum does.

 

Coliseum interior following 2016 renovation (Brian Libby)

 

The one caveat, of course, is that it's not just Memorial Coliseum that needs a renovation: it's the entire Rose Quarter.

This place is arguably the biggest urban-planning failure in central city Portland over the past quarter-century or more. It's a dead zone when there isn't a Blazer game or concert.

But that's not because of the two arenas. It's because of everything else: namely three above-ground parking garages and One Center Court, which is a hybrid of office building with a fourth garage. You could have the Taj Mahal on the Rose Quarter site and those surrounding garages would still make this place a dead zone. Bury that parking underground, and the Rose Quarter will be transformed.

Meanwhile, let’s just take a moment to toast this extraordinary work of midcentury-modern architecture by one of the great American architecture firms. Let’s hope that someday soon we can all visit the restored Coliseum, and that the urban setting it’s part of is one of pedestrians and connections to the river, not parked cars.

 

 

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Visiting Mahlum's Custom Blocks office, first Living Building-certified project in Portland

Mahlum Architects office, Custom Blocks (Lincoln Barbour)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Over the past two decades, I've probably walked, biked and driven past the Custom Blocks hundreds of times. But lately it's been a transformed place.

Located at Southeast Ninth Avenue and Madison Street, this two-block cluster of seven warehouse buildings was home to the Custom Stamping Company for a half-century. When one of its doors was open, it was possible to peer inside and see its huge stamping machines in action, shaping long metal sheets into various parts. Even when the doors were closed, you could hear their rhythmic clanging. In 2016, the blocks went silent and the property was sold to developer Capstone Partners. By 2018, a renovation by Scott Edwards Architecture was complete.

One of Capstone's tenants, Mahlum Architects, chose the southwest corner of the Custom Blocks for its new Portland office (the firm is headquartered in Seattle). The firm's ensuing tenant improvement has become a milestone: the first local project to earn Living Building Challenge certification for its sustainable design. I toured the project with Mahlum principal Kurt Haapala for a recent article in Metropolis magazine. Of course during my visit, the block had gone silent again, but for a different reason: the pandemic and quarantine. This time, though, the occupants are coming back.

As Mahlum began to contemplate leaving its longtime Pearl District office (in part due to seismic concerns), before signing on for a new home its leaders began by surveying employees. "We said, ‘What do you like about this place? What do you hope for in a new place?’ Number one was more collaborative space, followed by daylight and resiliency," he explained.

 

Mahlum Architects office, Custom Blocks (Lincoln Barbour)

 

When a member of Mahlum's staff suggested following Living Building Challenge procedures, Haapala recalled, it seemed daunting at first. "We considered the cost and we wrung our hands. ‘What does it mean? How do we know? Can we get it done in time when our lease is up?’ We also asked ourselves: ‘What’s the damage of saying no to the staff?’ It wasn’t pressure," he said. "But it wouldn’t send the right message to say no. We wanted our values in alignment. So we said yes."

"We have a fairly grassroots mindset at the firm about pushing sustainability as far as we can make it go on as many projects as possible," added Mahlum associate principal Jay Hindmarsh." If we’re going to be designing a new office for ourselves, it should really be everything our current office is, plus all our latest and greatest thinking about sustainability, which over the last 5-7 years has ballooned into so many different topics that it’s no longer LEED and low-energy and low-flow fixtures. It’s material health and low carbon and social equity. We did a really quick gut check. Should we be thinking about LEED, WELL? This was our opportunity to go for LBC. I think part of it was a number of folks including myself had been percolating in the material transparency ecosystem over the past few years. In the trade groups, at conferences. Especially in Seattle and Portland there’s been this groundswell of architects sharing their trials and tribulations with material transparency. It was a good time. We had just completed our certification label for the Mahlum organization through the Living Futures Institute."

The Mahlum office was also about walking the talk. "It was a way to demonstrate to material manufacturers and reps that yes, we’d be looking for material disclosures, but had gone through a similar process ourselves in terms of looking in the mirror and sharing that transparency," Hindmarsh said.

Before getting into the Living Building Challenge process and how it affected design, I'd like to delve more into the original building and company, and the Custom Blocks rehab by Scott Edwards Architecture.

"They operated the facility for like 50 years," recalled Capstone president Chris Nelson. "The day we signed the purchase agreement with the family, they had just told their employees they were shutting down. It was a pretty emotional day for them. When we signed the agreement, I think they were afraid we were going to tear it all down. I think it mattered to them, but they weren’t going to make any requirement. They just got tired of manufacturing parts and were ready to move on into retirement. But I think they were hoping somebody would save the project."

 

Archival shots of the Custom Stamping Company (Capstone Partners)

 

Then, Nelson said, the question became, "How do you save a building with this great industrial history that’s sort of raw, and build it forward to meet all the code requirements but save all the elements that feel old? The goal was, ‘Let’s not try to overthink the outside.’ That was the direction to Peter and his team: ‘Let’s walk in and feel like you’re not trapped in a dark old building.’"

Yet it would have also been a mistake, Nelson added, to be too heavy-handed with change. "When you get a building or buildings that dictate where major walls are and how they break up, it’s not a sliced bread kind of thing. It is what it is," he said.  "You need to be more patient and wait for the right fit. Some might say it’s too raw or industrial. Others who get it, they love it. Mahlum fell in love for their own reasons. So did I."

Although different portions of the two-block Custom Blocks were built at different times, the southwest corner of the Custom Blocks  was built in the 1930s as a Chevrolet dealership. A two-story wing on the north side was later added, with a large ramp so cars could be moved and stored upstairs. Between the buildings is one central hallway cutting through the entire block, taking advantage of the old ramp. The block-long lobby resulting was not part of the design brief but a suggestion from Scott Edwards.

It was the facility's time as Custom Stamping, though, that most impacted the buildings, even if the architecture itself was not altered.

 

Archival shots of the Custom Stamping Company (Capstone Partners)

They would take a variety of metals and roll it out onto these presses: kind of infinitely adjustable custom-dye presses," explained Peter Grimm of Scott Edwards Architecture. "You could put them in any combination and create almost any kind of metal part.  It wasn’t a foundry. They were just taking a rolled product—copper, aluminum, different types of steel—and bending, twisting, poking, punching and drilling those into various shapes for industry. At first it was mostly automobile parts. I think they worked for the aeronautics industry a bit. Really up until they sold the property, they were going strong. They had about 72,000 square feet of production, warehousing space, with a couple dozen big large stamping presses going at any given time. It was really a hub of activity. We toured it while they were still going full strength. It was loud, gritty. In the center was this oil bar,  where you got the oil you needed for your stamp press. It was just coated in metal shavings and oil."

To remove all that grime was extensive, but the developer and both architecture firms knew that ultimately the texture was a net-positive. After all, we're talking old-growth Douglas fir ceiling beams and columns, which were shot-blasted to remove paint, dirt and oil but left uncovered. While Capstone chose to replace a lot of the stained concrete floors elsewhere in the Custom Blocks, Mahlum wanted theirs kept, for the patina and the story it tells.

After cleanup, the second major move was a seismic upgrade, which can be seen in the X-shaped bracing at the edge of the building.

"Those buildings have been there 80 to 100 years and will stand for another 500 if you take care of them," Grimm said. "It’s the lateral load that is the issue. The science is changing. We’re aware of the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake [threat] and lateral movement. That’s what we do in the seismic upgrade: give the building the ability to resist sideways motion."

 

Inside the Mahlum Architects office during quarantine (Brian Libby)

 

Of the X-bracing, Grimm added, "They give the building the ability to flex without collapse. Pretty straightforward for a building like that. It’s a bay structure. From an engineering standpoint, you just integrate the X-frame as best you can. We wound up putting most of those on the exterior outside wall in line with the existing structure. You can use the minimum amount of frames. They’re big and beefy but few in number. That’s a dollar challenge because they’re expensive. It can range anywhere from about $50 a square foot to double or more for a complex building. We’re looking at one for a church right now that’s probably $125 a square foot because it’s a multistory, open-span space."

The Custom Blocks is not unreinforced masonry (URM). "Old URM buildings made of brick like those in Old Town, those are very expensive to rehab seismically. This is what we’d call under-reinforced masonry. They're really concrete or wood-framed buildings primarily, sometimes with a masonry cladding. In our case, it was all concrete and a little bit of masonry but not the primary frame." Seismically stabilizing a building like this is "more achievable," Grimm added, "because wood is really flexible and ductile. Concrete with some steel reinforcing does okay because the steel can flex."

At 7,500 square feet, the Mahlum office has space not only for desks (and, though it couldn’t have been foreseen at the time, post-pandemic social distancing) but also for a large kitchen, collaborative breakout spaces, and a large community room that could be used to host events. It also has many nice little touches, like a small foyer created with the help of salvaged wood shelving, on which are displayed various tchotchkes contributed by employees, dubbed the Curio Cabinet. As a University of Michigan grad, Haapala contributed a Bo Schembechler bobble-head doll.

 

Mahlum's reclaimed-wood foyer shelving (Lincoln Barbour)

 

There is also a bevy of house plants. I feel a bit funny mentioning them, because it's not usually a detail I touch upon. But it was clear in this case that it was a concerted effort, and there's enough plants that they really do contribute to the overall aesthetic, softening the linearity of the architecture and the hard edge of the surfaces.

As for fulfilling Living Building Challenge strictures, "It wasn’t so much designing. It was working to make sure every nut and bolt and washer met the red list material requirements, and the paper trail that was required," Haapala explained. While Mahlum had never designed an LBC-certified building before, Miller Hull, the Seattle firm next door to its headquarters, had and was willing to share its lessons. You can do this, the Miller Hull team told Mahlum’s. But it may take twice as long as you think. “They were right,” Haapala said with a laugh.

The LBC comprises seven performance categories, or “Petals”: Materials, Place, Water, Energy, Health, Equity, and Beauty. Buildings achieving full Living Building status, like Seattle’s Bullitt Center, meet standards in all seven areas. Satisfying only some can earn Petal certification. Mahlum’s tenant improvement in the Custom Blocks attained certification in Materials, in addition to Place, Equity, and Beauty.

“You have to hit one of three main Petals—such as Energy, Water, or Materials—as a starting point, then two or three others,” explained Jay Hindmarsh. The Place category was achieved by renovating the existing warehouse and not adding to its embodied carbon. The team met the Equity component by designing adjustable workstations, and Beauty by repurposing floorboards salvaged from historic Fort Vancouver in the aforementioned entry display.

Hindmarsh's team did the long, slow work of satisfying the Materials Petal and verifying that every last ingredient in every material brought into the office tenant improvement job was non-toxic.

 

Mahlum Architects office, Custom Blocks (Lincoln Barbour)

 

"It’s really having a design concept, having the technical and spec experience and expertise to call out all of those products that we know are compliant, and making sure in construction we have a process in place for proving out," Hindmarsh explained. "We may know we want this exact carpet in this exact color, but every single adhesive is different with its own inventory of ingredients. Put that in a spec and when it gets bid out, we have a process in place with submittals. Inevitably there are changes that come about during construction based on availability or finding a product we didn’t know we needed. We’ve got to get the information on what the product is and most of the time work pretty hard with the manufacturer or the rep to know who to talk to at the company who has the info about what the ingredients are and screening those against the red list."

After going through this process, Hindmarsh believes the industry still needs to do better. "Whether it’s lighting or door handles or flooring, they all have their own structure of how they’re made and what the distributor network looks like. There’s been a lot of movement over the last several years with supplier transparency, getting the whole web there, but I think we’ve still got a long way to go." When the team would make calls to suppliers, skepticism was not uncommon. "Inevitably someone had never heard of Living Building Challenge," the architect recalled. "I'd hear, 'Why is this important? Why would I tell you this?'"

But the bigger challenge is the granularity. "Even for question number one—has the manufacturer disclosed 100 percent of the ingredients to 100 ppm—even with a yes, there’s a bunch of different answers," Hindmarsh said. "We could pick a carpet that’s red-list free, made within 50 kilometers of the project site, no VOCs. It’s just really granular. But here’s often competing requirements. I may find a wire that doesn't have PVC jacketing, but it may come from a manufacturer in China. How do I balance competing priorities? But That’s where this concept of it being an advocacy tool and philosophy tool shows through. Just reaching out to people and letting them know that customers care about this, it shouldn’t be so difficult." After all, he added, "We can read the nutrition information on our yogurt."

A key going forward, Hindmarsh believes, is architects sharing information. He cites the recent AIA Seattle-sponsored Materials Matters series, a pilot for a national AIA curriculum "This idea of practitioners sharing their trials and tribulations and lessons learned in this space is still I think rare for architects," he said. "We’re not really good at sharing our mistakes and how hard things are. For me, coming to this group of people being open about how hard this was and how important it was, I was kind of blown away. For me it was a re-ignition around sustainability in a bigger sense: the willingness that people not just in the Pacific Northwest but nationally and internationally coming together and putting their lists out for the public."

 

 

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The Elk statue is just fine

The Elk statue in storage (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last Friday I visited an old friend. This friend has been the subject of controversy lately, not only because it has been temporarily removed from its home. Its absence has also been mistaken for the statue's destruction and permanent removal. So I decided to request a visit to to make sure that it's actually just fine.

I call this statue an old friend for a few reasons.

When I moved to Portland in 1997, Elk, as the statue is officially known, was one of a handful of sites that I associated with one of my heroes, filmmaker Gus Van Sant, and his magical Portland-set early films like Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. A scene from the latter movie takes place at the base of the Elk statue, with Keanu Reeves cradling River Phoenix in his arms. But since 1998 I've been living in Southeast Portland and crossing the Hawthorne Bridge regularly to get to downtown, which soon afterward carries me on SW Main Street past the statue. I also like that this is one of the only statues in the city that is not devoted to a person. There's no hagiography to dispute here: just a tribute to one of the largest, most majestic animals to traditionally call rainy western Oregon home.

Dedicated in 1900, Elk is actually the second-oldest remaining work of public art in Portland. Only the Skidmore Fountain from 1888 predates it.

I was motivated to seek out and assure the statue's safety after reading a series of misinformed social media posts, particularly on Facebook. Several suggested that protesters had destroyed the Elk statue: those demonstrating against George Floyd's murder, the long legacy of police violence against Black citizens and eventually against the federal Homeland Security troops joining local police in attacking these protesters.

 

The Elk statue in storage (Brian Libby)

 

The suggestion was that an angry mob sought to destroy the statue as vengeance, when quite the opposite was actually true. Protesters clearly seemed to love the statue, and though it was a very bad idea to light fires at the base of it, those fires were essentially making the Elk a kind of shrine. In the statue's absence, protesters have used a succession of inflated and other temporary Elk homages in its place. But it is true that the granite at the base of the statue was at some point damaged, so the statue was preemptively removed.

This year is actually the 120th anniversary of the Elk statue's erection, a gift to the city by David P. Thompson, who had been mayor of Portland from 1879-82. Thompson also had served as governor of the Idaho territory from 1875-76, and U.S. Envoy to the Ottoman Empire under President Ulysses S. Grant, serving from 1892-93.

Born in Cadiz, Ohio in 1834, Thompson first came west while herding sheep across the Oregon trail. Apprenticed as a surveyor, he helped build the first railroad in Oregon, around Willamette Falls at Oregon City, which was then the largest settlement here. He then became deputy surveyor for the U.S. government, surveying public lands in both the Oregon and Washington territories. Thompson eventually became rich by investing in some of the land he surveyed: or, more specifically, the railroads that traveled them (particularly the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company) and the mines that were dug by the hundreds after discovery of gold in California. He also gained wealth from banking and manufacturing investments.

As if those achievements weren't enough, beginning in 1891 David Thompson also served as the first president of the Portland Library Association (the forerunner of today's Multnomah County Library), and as president of the Oregon Humane Society, the latter of which may indicate a love of animals that saw him commission this statue instead of one honoring a person.

 

David P. Thompson (Wikimedia Commons)

 

By the time Thompson hired renowned New York sculptor Roland Hinton Perry to design Elk he had reached retirement age. But this actually the first of two statues he commissioned and donated to the city. The other, located in Washington Park and completed in 1904, is called  Coming of the White Man and was designed by Herman Atkins MacNeil and depicts Chief Multnomah and another Native American witnessing the arrival of Lewis & Clark. (Strangely, the name of this statue, with its title inscribed in granite, was used as the fictional name of the Elk statue in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho; the phrase can clearly be seen as Reeves holds Phoenix. In the film, Elk also has a rider.)

Yet Thompson never lived to see the second statue completed. In 1901, just a year after Elk was completed, Thompson fell ill just a few days into an around-the-world trip, returned to Portland and passed away.

Perry, the designer of the sculpture, is worth noting as well. Born in 1870 in New York, he was educated Paris's École des Beaux Arts. At just 24 years of age in 1894, he was commissioned to create a series of sculptures for the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, including the Court of Neptune Fountain in front of its main building. Perhaps this was the work that caught the attention of Thompson across the country in Portland.

Four years after Elk, in 1904, Perry designed two sculptures for the Gettysburg National Battlefield in Pennsylvania, and a year afterward the statue atop the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg.

 

Roland Hinton Perry (Wikimedia Commons)

 

Of course this statue on SW Main between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue has seen a lot of change in 120 years.

Today this three-block strip of greenspace, including Chapman and Lownsdale Squares on either side of the statue as well as Shrunk Plaza to the south, is lined mostly with government buildings. The Mark Hatfield United States Courthouse stands just east of Elk, but only since 1997; from 1913-95 there was the Hamilton Hotel on that site. City Hall was completed on its current site, a block southwest of the statue, five years before Elk, in 1895. The Portland Building, nearest to the statue at SW Fourth and Main, dates to 1982. But perhaps just as significantly, before that there was a modest two-story building that was home to McElroy's Spanish Ballroom, a jazz club where Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane played.

And of course there are the three park blocks themselves. The U.S. government-owned Terry Shrunk Plaza to the south, which sits atop underground parking for the Edith Green Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, is where the Portland Trail Blazers' championship parade ended in 1977. It's where star center Bill Walton poured a can of beer over then-mayor Neil Goldschmidt's head.

Chapman Square and Lownsdale Square were donated to the city in 1869. The squares were initially divided by sexes: Lownsdale for men and Chapman for women and children. Chapman square even has all female ginkgo trees. But it also is the site of a small moment in technological history. In 1889, Chapman Square became the termination site for the first electric power transmission line in North America, operating at 4,000 volts of direct current coming from an electric generating station at Willamette Falls in Oregon City, 13 miles away.

For much of the city’s history, the two squares have drawn orators and political protests, including the Occupy Portland protests in 2011 and of course the Black Lives Matter protests of this year.

 

The statue as seen in My Own Private Idaho (Fine Line Features)

 

Visiting Elk at a storage facility last Friday with Keith Lachowicz, the Regional Arts & Culture Council's manager of public art, was a bit surreal at first. As I entered the room, I was surprised that it almost felt like an art museum or gallery with its white drywall and polished concrete floor; that is, if you disregard the Shop-Vac in the corner and a few other miscellaneous accoutrements. This was the only artwork of any kind in the space, standing in the corner and strapped to a wood palette.

I was surprised that the elk depicted in the statue wasn't as big as I expected. Lachowicz told me he believes it's slightly smaller than a real elk would be, but the effect in this case came especially from the fact that Elk was/is removed from its granite base, which itself stands five feet high.

The statue's bronze surface had a few specs of colored paint, which hit when the base was being tagged with graffiti during the protests, and Lachowicz believes there is a small bit of soot stain on parts of Elk as well. Yet the latter is hard to differentiate from the subtle patina taken on by the statue over time. Generally, I thought it seemed to be in very good condition, and Lachowicz agreed.

 

The Elk statue in storage (Brian Libby)

 

Exactly when the statue will be returned to its site on SW Main Street, Lachowicz and RACC do not know. After all, this is still a developing story. The protests have been going on for months at this point, and while in many cases the demonstrations have moved into Portland's neighborhoods, the Justice Center and to a lesser extent the Mark Hatfield US Courthouse have been targets of protesters' demonstrations. These have overwhelmingly been peaceful demonstrations, at least when gun-wielding right wing counter-protesters don't show up. Yet as hundreds of eyewitnesses and on-the-ground journalists will tell you, there is an inextricable relationship between violence used against protesters —tear gas, flash bombs and individual beatings—and the vandalism inflicted on these buildings. Time after time this summer, riots have been declared when the presence of a riot has been questionable.

One wonderful side effect of all this, though, is that in this divided nation, at a time when tensions between left and right are running so high as American democracy itself feels as under threat as any statue or building, everyone seems to love the Elk . Voters on opposing sides of the political fence may be offering different versions of what happened to the statue—facts and their opposite, which some now call alternative facts—but when it was removed, everybody suddenly was talking passionately. A silent majority revealed itself. We may not have talked about it much in the past, but we all love Elk.

 

The Elk statue in storage (Brian Libby)

 

Even aside from the damage to its base and the statue's preemptive removal, Elk is relevant to this summer's racial justice protests in another way: as part of a conversation about the future of public art and especially statues.

In several cities in America and even beyond, statues of Confederate Civil War generals and other leaders with racist histories have been removed and their names have been taken off buildings. If we remove, say, a statue of Robert E. Lee in Virginia, or of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University, it ultimately becomes not just a conversation about the removal itself but what replaces it. I'm not the first one to suggest this, but what if it's not just racists whose statues we should consider removing? What if the very practice of venerating individuals, the hagiography itself, comes into question? It's not to say that we can no longer agree on any past leaders to honor in statuary, but instead to acknowledge that people, not persons, lead change.

What's interesting about Elk in this context is that it's a rare statue existing outside this conversation. It's not the only animal sculpture, even in Portland. Yet the practice is still relatively uncommon.

Of course there are animal statues, but not quite the same kind. I think of the lion sculptures outside certain famous buildings like the flagship New York Public Library branch on 42nd Street in Manhattan, or at the base of Trafalgar Square in London, or the bull sculpture near Wall Street in New York. Yet those sculptures are based on the ground, and they're meant to represent something specific: safety and security, or a bull market. I can't think of another animal sculpture that reaches quite this high up in the air, as a subject of veneration. Here the elk doesn't really represent something other than itself. Looking up at the sculpture, one is reminded not of some abstract idea or symbol, but the real elk that probably roamed this one-time clearing along the Willamette before it was settled.

As a result, Elk as a sculpture is partly about power and grace like a heroic-human sculpture usually is, but it's also about humility: our humility, before the natural world. The bronze elk statue in the middle of Oregon's biggest city is a kind of reminder, just like seeing Mt. Hood, that living here we are closer to the forests and beaches than most urban denizens. For a lot of us, it's a big part of why we live here.

I suspect that people on both sides of today's political dramas project ideas like these onto the Elk statue. Maybe for some traditionalists, nostalgists or masculine types, it conjures hunting and a time when life was freer, and Oregon was a real frontier. Maybe for social-justice protesters, seeing that statue is a reminder that Portland is just weird enough to erect statues to members of the deer family instead of just old white men; in other words, it's not drowning in its own history and corresponding misreadings of that history.

If so, that's all the more reason it will be great to have this fella back. It won't be tomorrow, or the next day, but we could say the same thing about a lot of current problems and their resolutions. Even so, the Elk has a rendezvous coming up with its old stomping grounds, and the City of Portland has a promise to keep.

 

 

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The Fox Tower at 20, and the Heilig Theatre at 110

Fox Tower, 2000 (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's easy to forget given all the upheaval that's been going on in 2020 from pandemics to police brutality, but this year three Portland landmarks are celebrating their 20th anniversaries: the Fox Tower overlooking Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Old Town, and the Wieden + Kennedy World Headquarters in the Pearl District.

Last fall I got a little ahead of myself and did a post about W+K's 20th anniversary (when it was really 19 and a half), including an interview with Allied Works Architecture founder Brad Cloepfil. I've got an interview about the Chinese Garden with architects Nancy Merryman and Linda Barnes in the can waiting to go. But this time around, let's talk about the Fox Tower site: both that building, completed in 2000, and the theater that stood there for 87 years prior.

The Fox Tower arrived in 2000, and yet I think of it as a 1990s building: reflective of those times and styles. It's also a product of the 1990s economic boom. I've learned that any time of economic growth result in an oversized architectural presence in a city for that time period. That's true in Portland of the early 1910s and much of the 1920s and the 1950s, for instance. The 1990s were in retrospect a kind of Pax Americana before the 21st century dramas of 9/11, Trump and the Covid-19 pandemic. There were a number of downtown buildings that arrived in this decade, but arguably the city’s most prominent 1990s building stands at the southwest corner of Pioneer Courthouse Square: the Fox Tower, a 27-story office building completed in 2000.

This is an early example of an architectural type that later became commonplace: the slender tower rising from a wider podium built to the sidewalk. The Fox Tower is also distinctive for its curving east façade, which helps minimize shadows falling over the square. Yet like a subdivision named after the landscape it replaces, the Fox Tower is named for one of the city’s most beloved old movie houses, the Fox Theatre, one of a few different names by which it was known while occupying this block from 1910 to 1997.

The Fox Theatre's demolition left the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall as one of the sole reminders that Broadway was once lined with such theaters. While the Fox Theatre was known principally as one of the grandest Portland movie houses, it was also known (both at the beginning of the theater’s history and the end) a performance venue that hosted three of the century’s most famous names, each from a decidedly different era: Nijinsky, Monk, Cobain.

 

Heilig Theater postcard (Oregon Historical Society)

 

The two buildings standing here along Broadway over the past 110 years were the visions of two different men of the theater world a half-century apart: Calvin Heilig and Tom Moyer.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1862, Heilig ultimately came to own over 200 theaters in seven states, but the Heilig Theatre, as the Fox Theatre was originally known, was Portland’s largest upon its 1910 completion and said to be the largest west of the Mississippi with1,500 seats. Clad in brick with a Romanesque architectural style, the Heilig was designed by English-born architect E.W. Houghton, a specialist in theater designs.

The interior was appointed like an opera house, with two rear balconies as well as individual boxes along the sides of the auditorium. The most unique feature was hidden at the rear of the lower balcony: a private viewing box connected to Calvin Heilig’s adjacent upstairs apartment. That meant he could watch onstage performances from his home.

Although the Heilig Theatre principally featured traveling vaudeville theater shows and plays produced by Heilig’s stock company, in 1917 it hosted the world’s most famous ballet dancer: Vaslav Nijinsky. Over the prior decade, Ballets Russes, the company started by the legendary impresario Sergei Diaghilev, had introduced ballet to the world, with Nijinsky as star dancer

 

Vaslav Nijinsky (History Collection)

 

By the time he performed in Portland in 1917, Nijinsky had spent two years under house arrest in Budapest following the outbreak of World War I, but after intervention by Diaghilev and several international leaders, the dancer was allowed to leave for New York and an American tour with Ballets Russes. Shortly after performing in Portland, however, Nijinsky’s mental condition deteriorated, and by 1919 he was committed to a mental asylum, never to perform in public again.

From the beginning, the Heilig Theatre had been equipped to show moving pictures, for a 1913 advertisement pictured in Gary Lacher and Steve Stone’s Theatres of Portland mentions “Edison’s Talking Pictures” prominently. The formal switch came in 1919, when the theater changed its name to the Hippodrome. In 1929, it was leased by the Paramount-Publix chain and changed its name again, to the Rialto. That’s when capacity for screening movies with sound was added, as well as the theater’s eye-catching marquee: a waterfall of neon lights. Beneath it was the theater’s signature island-style ticket booth, a silver-clad capsule in a Streamline Moderne style. Yet the timing couldn’t have been worse, for the Great Depression sank the new owners, who sold to the J.J. Parker chain. Now the venue was known as the Mayfair Theatre, which hosted both double-feature movies as well as stage shows.

In 1944, the Theater hosted two of the all-time greatest names in jazz: pianist Thelonious Monk and saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. At the time, Monk was a relative unknown and Hawkins was the famous bandleader, although it’s Monk that is now a Mt. Rushmore-level figure in the history of bebop jazz.

 

Thelonious Monk, 1947 (William Gottlieb/Wikimedia Commons)

 

When they arrived in town by train the group, all African-American, was refused service at the first restaurant they entered. With few Portland hotels willing to accommodate black customers, a local minister helped find local families with whom the group could stay. Ads for the Mayfair show boasted an “All Colored All Star Jazz Symphony that could play everything from Brahms to Boogie!’ On December 4, 1944, they played a matinee and evening show before moving across the river for a week-long gig at The Dude Ranch, a jazz club on Northeast Broadway in the present-day Leftbank Building.

In 1954, the Mayfair Theatre was sold and extensively renovated from a design by local firm Dougan and Heims, at which point it finally became the Fox Theatre, tied to 20^th Century Fox studio. It was equipped with CinemaScope wide-screen technology, which made it the second-largest screen in the United States (trailing New York’s Roxy Theatre by two feet). For its August 12 premiere, the studio flew several of its famous actors to attend, including Van Heflin, Mamie Van Doren, Rita Moreno and Johnnie Ray. That evening the street was closed outside the theater and 2,000 spectators filled bleachers to watch the stars file in, greeted by the Rose Festival queen, to a new interior in an undersea decor theme.

The Fox continued as a popular Portland movie house for over 35 years, with 1965’s The Sound of Music its longest-running film with a run of over two years.  In 1990 the historic venue finally stopped showing movies, but as owner Tom Moyer planned and then shelved an office building on the site, the Fox Theatre continued for another seven years as a performance venue. On October 29, 1991, Nirvana and its iconic singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain played their first Portland show since the release of the band’s classic album Nevermind; it was also one month after the debut of their video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the song that launched Nirvana to superstardom.

 

Kurt Cobain (Frans Schellekens)

 

By that time, though, the Fox Theatre’s days were numbered because its owner had already transitioned from movies to real estate development. Born in Southeast Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood in 1919, Tom Moyer grew up working in his parents’ movie theater, where his father had gone from projectionist to proprietor. But this was also a family of boxers, and Moyer dropped out of high school to pursue a career in the ring. He ascended the ranks quickly, winning 145 of 156 amateur fights. In 1940 Moyer narrowly lost to one of the era’s greatest boxers, Sugar Ray Robinson, who today may be best remembered from the 1980 Martin Scorsese-directed classic Raging Bull. The Robinson-Moyer bout had been to decide who would represent the United States at the Olympic Games. When Robinson decided to turn pro instead, Moyer received the coveted U.S. team spot. But then the 1940 games were canceled by the outbreak of World War II. Moyer turned pro instead and won his first 22 bouts, but then quit to join the Army after America entered the war. He served in the 41st Infantry Division and was awarded a Bronze Star. During that time, Moyer also his future wife, Marylin, whom he wed in 1946.

After the war, Moyer took over the family business and built the company into a large regional chain of theaters. In 1966, he founded the Eastgate Theater on 82^nd Avenue in Portland, the first multi-screen theater in the region; a year later followed the nearly identical Westgate in Beaverton (where a decade later I saw classics like Star Wars and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial for the first time). The company’s growth wasn’t without casualties, for Moyer went to court with his siblings over ownership of the business. But under his leadership, Moyer Theaters at its peak included more than 350 screens, becoming one of the nation’s largest theater chains.

In 1989, Moyer sold the company to Act III Theaters (now Regal Cinemas) for $192 million. He also retained the land underneath several of his theaters, including two prominent sites on Broadway: the Fox Theater and that of the Broadway Theater just down the street. That led to demolition of the Broadway, replaced by the 1000 Broadway office tower in 1991, then the Fox Theatre demolition in 1997 and completion of the Fox Tower in 2000.

The Fox Tower became the most prominent downtown Portland building by Thompson Vaivoda Architects, which after its founding in 1984 by Robert Thompson and Ned Vaivoda—who between them brought years of experience working for the legendary Marcel Breuer and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill—had become known for designing Nike’s pioneering corporate campus in suburban Beaverton: more than 20 different buildings housing design studios, research labs, restaurants, athletic training facilities and office space.

 

Robert Thompson and Ned Vaivoda today (TVA Architects, C2K Architecture)

 

Looking back today, TVA design principal Robert Thompson sees the similarities in his two career-making clients: Phil Knight and Tom Moyer, for whom he was working with concurrently in the late ’90s as Nike pursued a major campus expansion at the same time as the Fox Tower. “Both men were very soft-spoken gentlemen, both surprisingly quiet yet clear and decisive in articulating their goals and vision,” Thompson recalls. “When they spoke, you listened.”

Coincidentally, Nike co-founder Phil Knight would not only have been familiar with the Fox Tower's architects, with whom he worked, but also with this particular intersection and its significance, and I'm not talking about Pioneer Courthouse Square. Across the street was the original home of the Oregon Journal newspaper, in the Jackson Tower. Knight's father served as the Journal's publisher for 18 years beginning in 1953. Its offices had moved out of the Jackson Tower by the time Knight was leading the paper, but this building was its original home.

Indeed, the Fox Tower was essentially designed three different times. First was Moyer’s initial unbuilt 1991 venture, with 23 floors of offices above a three-story retail podium and four levels of underground parking. But the numbers didn’t add up for Moyer and the project went cold. The second design came in 1996 when Moyer struck a deal with the city to provide a subsidized Smart Park garage underground and then wanted TVA to add an additional six levels of above-ground parking. But city leaders convinced Moyer to cut a deal with Act III Theaters (now Regal Cinemas), the very chain to which he had sold Moyer Theaters, to add a ten-screen multiplex to the podium instead.

“That came very late in the design process but it allowed us to get rid of the above-grade parking which we were struggling with in terms of how to elegantly incorporate it into the massing and form of the tower,” Thompson says. “It was a fabulous programmatic change that lead to a complete redesign of the building at that point.”

The podium was a response to an earlier generation of downtown office buildings, all of which lacked ground-floor retail space. Office buildings of the 1960s had been set back from the sidewalk and did little to encourage active street life. The Fox Tower took advantage of its prominence to Pioneer Courthouse Square to attract large retailers with its podium’s two-story glass retail frontage. “For me the retail connection to Pioneer Square as well as how pedestrians experienced the building at the street level was critical to the success of designing a tower that activated and energized the city both in the day as well as night," says Thompson. "When I drive up Broadway at night, I am still taken by the degree of transparency, the bright lights and the energy that radiates from the retail stores that occupy the base of the tower."

 

L-R: The Fox Tower and TVA's later Park Avenue West (Hoffman Construction)

 

The Fox Tower’s curving northeast façade, which makes the otherwise boxy office building distinctive, was a response to city regulations. “The city zoning code at that time did not allow any shadow from the tower to be cast directly onto Pioneer Square on April 21 at noon,” the architect recalls. “This condition quickly became a positive in the development of the tower design. The building is a simple rectangle in plan but with the introduction of the soft curve in the curtain wall, it energized the form of the building.” It also gave them leverage with their client. “Every project we designed for Tom Moyer looked to maximized the available FAR [floor-area ratio] that was allowed on the site. That was one of his most important programmatic goals,” Thompson recalls. "I loved Tom. As a developer he was very much driven the economics of the bottom line, so every square foot counted. He was quick to let you know what the loss in rent looked like over a 10 to 20-year period for every square foot of area not incorporated into the building design.”

The curve at the top of the Fox Tower is part of a broader trend I call the ’90s Curve. Every central-city building I can think of that was constructed in that decade featured some kind of curving roof or façade, although always as part of an overall rectilinear form. Other ’90s buildings like 1000 Broadway or the Hatfield U.S. Courthouse felt gimmicky, but at the Fox Tower, the curve is what brings the design alive. Perhaps that’s because it’s not just pure aesthetics like a barrel or dome-shaped roof but instead it’s a functional move.

"I would say the reason you feel positively about The Fox’s radius and curvature is because it has a purpose," Ned Vaivoda explains. "The radius portion of the façade is a clear and direct response to mitigating shadows on Pioneer Square. When you consider the others, most are largely form-driven and lacking a fundamental purpose. While the Fox’s radius is firstly functional and intentional, there is a thoughtful and formal composition of the tower elements that unite the radius and the orthogonal. The Fox is a 26-story building adjacent to the City’s most celebrated public space. I think that purpose is legible, and that’s why you find it compelling."

 

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Favorite architecture of the 2010s (part five): home renovations

Lincoln Street Residence (Lincoln Barbour)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In this continuing occasional series discussing my favorite architecture of the 2000s, we've already looked at two types of housing: multifamily and new single-family houses. Now let's turn our attention to renovations of single-family homes, including in some cases conversion of another building type.

As I mentioned in previous posts, there surely are all kinds of worthy projects I won't be writing about here. I only realistically see a portion of the projects out there, so this list is not an argument that the projects I'm talking about are the best per se. I'll be the first to admit that I'm also drawing from my own archive of magazine and newspaper stories to a large degree. But if you feel strongly that there's something I've unjustly left out, let me know. A couple of times after previous posts, people have written to argue for their work or I've simply remembered more projects that I loved, and I've amended the original posts to include them.

Where Old Meets New

That preamble notwithstanding, if asked to name house renovations that really caught my attention, two bold alterations of historic early 20th century houses in Southeast Portland immediately come to mind: Fivesquare by Lever Architecture and the Lincoln Street Live/Work by Beebe Skidmore.

There probably are some people out there who look at the classic American Foursquare house that Lever expanded with a glass cube on top, or the large Craftsman that Beebe Skidmore gave a much glassier and contemporary-styled new west-facing facade and think they've been desecrated. On some level I can understand that aversion, because Foursquares and Craftsmans like these are beautiful in their own right. In each of these cases, the contemporary alteration or addition is jarring to the original composition.

However, there are still a whole lot of Foursquare and Craftsman houses out there, and none of them are like these houses. What's more, each project says something about the desire to adapt these homes to modern living or how to expand them.

In the case of Fivesquare, they could have expanded it the way most do: simply adding more in the back of the house. But it's not as if that doesn't change the overall composition too; it just doesn't change the view from the street like Fivesquare's little third-story cube does. Doing it this way lets the original house be itself and the addition be its own thing.

The new square footage expands the unused attic space perches on top of the original 1910 house, at a 45-degree angle, like a modern treehouse, offering panoramic views of the neighborhood. “When we came up with this idea in the studio, everyone liked it,” Lever founder Thomas Robinson told The New York Times in 2015. “I was thinking, ‘Their neighbors are going to hate them — and the historic people are going to think we’ve desecrated this little iconic house.’ But it was intriguing.”

In the case of the Lincoln Street residence, the new glass facade is transformative in terms of the natural light it adds to the space. While it's true that from a side or diagonal view the juxtaposition of the new glass cubes on the west facade against the original Craftsman is quite eye-catching, one can still look at the house straight ahead from the sidewalk and not even notice the change.

I also appreciate the point architect Heidi Beebe made about the spirit of the original. When the house was built over a hundred years ago, she noted in a 2018 New York Times interview, it wasn’t considered nearly as conventional as it is today. In fact, “it was sort of over the top,” she said, with the large decorative beams beneath the overhanging roof and the wooden lattice pattern running down the side of the front porch. “Some people still build Craftsman homes today, but they tend not to have all the flair and oddities of the originals.” Maybe these glass insertions are a little over the top too, but in a way that suits the original spirit. Maybe there's always been a touch of the Postmodern style to this house and we just didn't see it.

 

Fivesquare (Lincoln Barbour)

 

If they're a little jarring at first by adding contemporary elements, these additions are actually following historic preservation best practices in a way that many old-home expansions are not. In any non-reservation building project like an office or school, the idea is to make it very clear where the original architecture ends and the new alterations or additions begin. Most historic single-family homes that get renovated or expanded don't do that. They try and disguise that work. In this way, Fivesquare and the Lincoln Street Residence may boldly contrast old and new architecture, but they do it honestly.

Near where these projects stand there are lots where old homes have been torn down and oversized, tritely neo-historic homes have been built in their place. This is another reason to like the two Beebe Skidmore and Lever-designed projects: they're realistic about giving customers the larger, more light-filled homes they want. But they don't eradicate what was there only to patronizingly build something there in a warmed-over, dumbed-down version of that historic style.

One other house comes to mind as a true fusion of the original architecture and a contemporary language. In this case, the original house was midcentury-modern, so it's not a case of juxtaposition so much as the repeating of a rhythm: the Council Crest House, in which Seattle architecture firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (in collaboration with Don Tankersley Construction) transformed a 1952 house in Southwest Portland's Council Crest neighborhood by architect Roscoe Hemenway—which, incidentally, was designed  for inventor Karl Kurtz, who developed stereoscopic devices for Sawyer’s, maker of the famous View-Master toy.

 

Council Crest Residence (Nic Lehoux, Ian Allen)

 

"There’s a natural progression and sequence: a sort of unfolding and choreography as you go through," said Robert Miller of BCJ in a 2019 Dwell article about the project.

The ground floor’s ceiling was raised to allow a ribbon of clerestory windows, filling the interior with light—especially after a wall separating the dining room and living room was removed.  The door and windows on the ground floor were also moved about four feet toward the road, and a wall of basalt fencing added just beyond the exterior to increase privacy. But it is divided into three large sections, allowing passersby on the street to see straight through the interior to the view beyond.  A new top floor, a kind of penthouse suite for the couple, was also added, but set back along the north and west from the ground floor to keep a lower profile, with a wall of ipe cladding extending past the edge of the house to form a secluded terrace to the south. The architects also cut a swath of glass into the middle of the top floor on the street-facing side to introduce more light.

"We extended roof lines, decks, and hardscaping as far as we could go," said homeowner Greg Hoffman. "There’s a couple views from the exterior that scream, ‘This is something unique,’ but certainly from an interior standpoint, it’s just really well-executed craftsmanship, with an emphasis on harmony and balance. It’s hard to fully appreciate unless you’re in it." 

I have to agree. While the house viewed from outside really does seem like a true hybrid of Hemenway's 1952 original and BCJ's 2018 transformation, the interior is just a cocoon of wood surrounding beautiful furniture and art that gives way to stunning panoramic views.

Warehouse To House

Two of my favorite single-family home projects that transformed their original architecture started not with old houses but warehouses.

The Bowstring Truss House by Works Progress Architecture, completed in 2013, was adapted from a 5,000-square-foot former warehouse and auto repair shop in Northwest Portland. It's all about the wide-open space enabled by a series of four bow-string trusses and the beauty of this exposed roof framing. The design had to then insert a standard residential program that the clients could live among. 

 

Bowstring Truss House (Matthew Williams)

 

The project had a fairly long gestation. The owners, artist Linda Hutchins and her husband, John Montague, first came across the warehouse in 2006, when she was looking for a new studio. But after walking through the space, Hutchins recalled in a 2015 Dwell article that she told her husband, "I don’t want my studio here. I want to live here." With the real estate market booming, the architects initially recommended tearing down the warehouse, building a new multistory condominium building, and living in the penthouse. "But that really wasn’t why we bought the building," Montague says. The warehouse had to stay.

Make no mistake, though: WPA made the project sing. Key to the whole thing is a small atrium carved into the middle of the space, as well as 11 skylights dotting the roof. There's a couple of bedrooms when you first come in, and more in the back, but the living room and kitchen go around the wood-clad atrium in one big room, with light pouring in from above and from a small adjacent courtyard.

Another warehouse conversion I quite like from the past decade is the Division Street Residence by Emerick Architects. The project began with an 8,000-square-foot one-story building that had been a corner grocery, a printing press and a mechanic’s shop. The intent was to construct an industrial loft on top inspired by the clients’ former apartment in the TriBeCa neighborhood in New York. "We lived in New York in the heyday of loft conversions,” homeowner Joan Childs told Amara Holstein in The New York Times. “The rawer it was, the cooler you were.”

 

Division Street Residence (Lincoln Barbour)

 

The 2,400-square-foot loft created on the second story is lined with 13-foot-high windows, which were custom-made to replicate 1930s steel-framed factory windows, only they're made from wood and come with double-paned glass. The interior has few walls save for a single bedroom and bathroom off to one side. Like the atrium does for the Bowstring Truss House, here a large fireplace anchors the combined living and kitchen area. Downstairs includes a guest apartment and two-car garage. But the whole thing looks not much different than the warehouse did before the project began. The upstairs addition feels like it was always there.

Some additions are bold and a juxtaposition of two architectural languages, and others feature additions meant to blend in. There's no wrong answer, just good and bad. Or in this case, good and good.

Midcentury Southwest

There are several houses renovated over the past decade that don't necessarily radically alter what was there, but fine-tune and update the homes, especially the kitchens, in a way that helps these homes come alive again. Just about all of these seem to be located in Southwest Portland or just beyond, in Beaverton.

Many of the projects I'm about to mention were chosen based on love for the original homes as much as the excellence of the renovations themselves, yet a few small moves by contemporary designers and architects can really become some of the best parts of what gets subsequently unveiled.

Take this 1959 William Fletcher House, renovated by Jessica Helgerson Interior Design, where a series of built-in bookshelves, skylights and a red tile-covered kitchen island stand out, and make a nice pairing with the wood surfaces enveloping much of the rest of the interior. 

 

The William Fletcher-designed Ruell residence (Grant Harder)

 

"It was about being inspired and taking cues from midcentury design," project manager Emily Knudsen Leland of Helgerson's office said in a 2016 Dwell article by Amara Holstein, "but also bringing in modern pieces that fit." 

Some of these same qualities exist in Jessica Helgerson Interior Design's renovation of the Feldman House by Saul Zaik. "The house had some really lovely things about it and some really problematic things," Helgerson recalled in Dwell. "But our goal was for it to look as if we hadn’t done anything, to be authentic to the era of the house. What would Saul do?"

The Saul Zaik-designed Fletcher Residence (Grant Harder)

 

One of my favorite renovations of the past decade to visit was the Sutor House by Pietro Belluschi, its restoration overseen by his son, architect Anthony Belluschi. The Sutor is particularly special in Pietro Belluschi's portfolio. Although it wasn't the first house he designed, it was really the first in what came to be called the Northwest Modern style. It also arrived just a year after the Watzek House, located just a few hundred yards down Skyline Boulevard. Both houses exemplify the marriage of Modernism with Northwest vernacular traditions such as farmhouses, barns and ranch houses. In the case of these two houses, though, they also show a strong Japanese influence, whether it's the Watzek's courtyard or the way the Sutor almost resembles a pagoda.

Inside, Anthony Belluschi's design reconstructed the former maid’s quarters, which had been turned into a breakfast nook, and modernized the kitchen to gain space by moving a wet bar to the dining room. And some of Pietro's original design details look better than ever, such as the woven-wood ceiling at the foyer and the curving wall of zebra wood. Yet the most intriguing aspect of the Sutor renovation may be outside.

While designing the Sutor House, Belluschi befriended Jiro Harada, a professor at the Imperial Household Museum in Tokyo and author of numerous books on Japanese gardens and architecture who was in town as a visiting professor at the University of Oregon. Influenced by Harada, Belluschi and Gerke created an elegant, Japanese-style strolling garden at the house that in later years disappeared through neglect. Homeowner Aric Wood and his family have uncovered that original garden one shovel-full at a time. "It was so overgrown you couldn’t even find the rock wall," Aric Wood said in Dwell. "But we uncovered the rock wall to find the stone steps. We dug out the stone steps and discovered pathways leading down into the forest. It’s been kind of a continuous process of uncovering."

 

Sutor House (Brian Flaherty)

 

Then there's the Watzek itself. Although it didn't undergo any kind of renovation that would noticeably alter what's there, the roof has been replaced and other acts of maintenance performed over the past several years. But what's most significant is that starting in 2011 the Watzek House became accessible to the public. it had been bequeathed to the University of Oregon in 1996, but on the condition that Yeon's partner be allowed to keep living there. The arrangement continued until 2011, and now each summer the house is available for public tours. I've been a few times over the years, for tours and a couple private dinners and public talks.

That living room at the Watzek never ceases to amaze me, with its coffered wood ceiling and exquisite detail. The dining area with its floor-to-ceiling glass is also exquisite. Being at the Watzek is like experiencing some kind of handover from traditional architecture into modern, maybe because the furnishings are more traditional. In any case, it's a masterpiece, and quite probably the best house in Oregon.

 

Watzek House living room (University of Oregon)

 

I also would like to mention a recent remodel by architect Paul McKean of a Richard Campbell-designed house in Southwest, also just off Skyline Boulevard.

In the early 1960s, architects Richard Campbell and Joachim Grube acquired a parcel of forested land in Portland’s Sylvan Highlands west of downtown that had gone undeveloped because of its uneven topography. Soon the partners co-designed for themselves and their families a pair of houses nestled on two small swaths of high ground.

This Campbell-designed house was completed in 1962 and won an award in Sunset magazine shortly thereafter. For more than a half century the house went unchanged, occupied by Campbell's ex-wife. It's in the main room as one enters, where the kitchen, dining area and living room are combined under one massive pitched roof where one feels submerged in a cocoon of wood.

Cain-Wong Residence (Spin Photography)

"There’s not much drywall in that house," McKean said in Dwell, "just those beautiful cedar ceilings and the Douglas fir beams."

Finally, there is the one house on my list that's not in Portland but rather Beaverton: the Heather Court residence by Garrison Hullinger Interior Design. It's a remodel of one of many homes in the area built by Robert Rummer, and to my eyes this is one of the best Rummer treatments I've seen.

Rummers have always had an inherent challenge, I think: their atriums. I've been in several of these homes over the years, and often there are these spaces between the entry and the main living/dining area. They bring in light and work almost like covered outdoor areas, but homeowners often seem clueless about what to do with them. They're not literally outside, after all, yet they're also not a traditional room of the house that has a function.

Heather Court Residence (Blackstone Edge Studios)

Like most, this house's atrium had become an extended foyer. But Hullinger’s team, led by interior designer Nikki Maeda, made the atrium feel more fully like the outdoors, adding a naturally stained teak deck and even placing clusters of river rocks in the corners, as if the deck were a floating dock. Next to a cluster of garden chairs, a wall of decorative patterned concrete tiles draws the eye. Instead of a pass-through space, the glass-roofed atrium now acts more like an enclosed front yard.

As I write this, almost all of us have been spending more time at home than ever. It's shelter from the elements and from exposure to Covid-19. Sensing that this pandemic may take years for the world to fully recover from, especially given the tragically inept response from our corrupt national leadership and how it's cost us many lives, it may be that home designs and home renovations in the years ahead become more modest. Or given how international travel seems destined to become more seldom and more expensive, perhaps we'll instead double down on fixing up our homes.

Yet these renovations are perhaps also a reminder that both good and bad times come and go. These houses have seen many decades, and chances are they will survive both the pandemic and the threat to democracy we face today. That's comforting.

 

 

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Visiting the renovated Portland Building, and seeing the light

A second-floor meeting area overlooking Chapman Square (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Because of the extraordinary times we're living in, with all kinds of public events across the spectrum cancelled, it was easy to miss or forget the fact that the Portland Building's grand re-opening was originally scheduled for last month.

After more than a year of construction, and years of hand-wringing about what to do with this leaky and nearly lightless architectural landmark, the city's most famous building has been not just renovated but transformed.

Perhaps that's not so clear to disinterested passers by, who see the same colorful cladding as the scaffolding comes off and the tarp is removed from the Portlandia statue. But on the outside the Portland Building has been re-clad in an entirely different material, something that normally would be a big no-no for any such historically significant building. And that's not even the biggest change. It's inside where one can hardly believe this is the same place.

The new facade we've all been looking at for the past several months. It's what represented the most controversial aspect of the renovation, because normally, one of the most essential proverbs of historic preservation is that any material replacement, particularly on the exterior, must be "in kind": the same material, and hopefully unrecognizable from what was originally there. In this case, however, that wasn't really possible — that is, not unless one committed to the notion of lots of preventative maintenance (patching potential leaks) for the life of the building.

 

Portland Building in overcast skies from Fourth Avenue (Brian Libby)

 

To put this another way, nobody would try and build a building with a painted concrete facade today. It's considered downright primitive. So after extensive research and consulting facade experts, instead the architects from DLR Group, along with contractor Howard S. Wright and their client, the City of Portland, chose an aluminum rain screen exterior. There was understandably concern that it would look different, that it would catch the light differently.

But the facade, at least to my eyes, looks quite good. From a distance, it looks like the same Portland Building it ever was. Up close, it does seem true that at times in the morning or afternoon when the sun hits the building, that aluminum catches the light. It doesn't reflect it per se, but it's certainly less of a matte surface. However, there is no oil-canning, or visible waviness of the material. I mean, it's not as if this is the same quality or grade of aluminum that makes soda pop cans.

 

Portlandia from a Portland Building conference room (Brian Libby)

 

From the moment one steps inside, it's clear things are very different. The elevator core in the middle of the building is the same, but right there in the lobby, which had been one of the building's spaces most devoid of natural light, you can now see through the building in all four directions. Straight ahead upon entering from the west, it's possible to see straight ahead through floor-to-ceiling glass toward the east. Because the ground-floor retail spaces have been incorporated into the lobby, there are views through the glass to the north and south as well. Particularly on the ground floor, the Portland Building actually feels like a glassy building. Think about that for a minute: a building that used to feel like a bunker inside now feels transparent.

Upstairs offices were the real test, however, because there was no opportunity to create new glass walls on the upper floors. The only move the architects really had available was to make the heretofore dark glass clear and make some of the shadow boxes (where there was glass on the outside but a solid surface on the inside) true windows.

 

Looking out from an upstairs Portland Building window (Brian Libby)

 

Except that's not really true, I realized while touring the interior. They also removed the drop ceilings, which gave these floors more height and exposed the original and previously always-covered concrete coffered ceilings. This has allowed light to not only pass through the now-clear glass but to bounce off the walls and ceiling, to "wash" the rooms with light, as designers would say. It makes these offices not just brighter than they were before, but pretty much as bright as any office building considered well-lit. And they don't just feel well-lit. Because of the exposed ceilings, they feel more spacious. It's true that mechanical equipment is now exposed in the ceilings, but that's a small price to pay.

What's more, the newly-exposed concrete coffered ceiling adds a new ingredient to the Portland Building design, or perhaps more accurately, it reveals something inherent to the building that no one ever thought about before. Postmodern architecture was not just a response to decades of Modernism. I think more than anything it was a rejection of Brutalism, which rose in the late '60s and early '70s and placed an emphasis on concrete interiors and exteriors alike. Today with the hindsight of history, we can see a certain beauty in Brutalist buildings. But no doubt the Postmodernism practiced by the likes of Michael Graves, Robert Venturi and Peter Eisenmann was to Brutalism what Johnny Rotten was to Emerson, Lake and Palmer: a rebellion. Yet when the coffered ceiling of the Portland Building was exposed, it revealed a truth hiding in plain sight: being built from concrete, the Portland Building has the pieces of a Brutalist building that it then simply covered up with paint and fake ribbons.

 

Portlandia from a Portland Building conference room (Brian Libby)

 

DLR Group principal Carla Weinheimer, who oversaw the project, laughed when I suggested this and agreed, saying: "It's Brutalism in a dress."

Stripping away some of the interior clutter and making the facade glass clearer and more prevalent also better connects the interior to its Postmodern skin, or at least to its famous statue outside. I don't ever remember being able to look out at the back of the Portlandia statue before, or to look past the statue to the view outside. And I know there was never an observation deck to the side of the statue before. Now it's likely to become a tourist attraction.

 

Portlandia from a new observation deck (Brian Libby)

 

There's no doubt that this building is vastly, vastly better to work in. But let's return for a moment to the question of the Portland Building, historic preservation and precedent. It's still true that the approach to this renovation is the exception to the rule. The principles that organizations like DoCoMoMo argued for in opposing this approach to the Portland Building project are still sound: that our most important historic landmarks have to be protected, and that starts with their integrity. That integrity is normally always based first on materials, especially with regard to the exterior. And for the most part, that should not change.

However, the principles of historic preservation and how to go about it are based on our approach to an earlier generation of buildings that were well-built and used time-tested construction techniques. Many aspects of building design and construction in the 1970s and '80s turned out to be ill-suited for long term viability. Everyone knows the old adage that they don't build 'em like they used to. I think buildings like the Portland Building embody that.

As a result, we have to think differently about how we preserve certain buildings of this era. That's also necessary and even appropriate given that the intentions of Michael Graves and his design team, once they accomplished the practical tasks of creating an office building, were all about color and expressiveness: not necessarily the materials themselves. After all, did any of us ever look at the old Portland Building and think specifically about the material of its exterior cladding? I don't think so. It was all about the color and the expressiveness of the other decorations like the faux garlands.

How do we know this? After all, Michael Graves passed away before the Portland Building renovation happened, and before the design approach was announced. But the employees from his firm who were there at the time of the Portland Building's design and construction all concur that Graves would have been fine with the new cladding material. The building as built was a huge compromise of Graves's vision, because the budget was so small. Graves just wanted to get the commission, which he won mostly because his design was on budget and the other two proposals were not, and he just wanted to get the building built, like any architect. But he was willing to agree to almost any value-engineering to make the project happen, and in a visit to Portland during the time the Portland Building was threatened with demolition, he made it clear that he was fine with a variety of changes, from making the ground-floor retail spaces part of the lobby to changing out the glass.

One quibble I do have with the Portland Building renovation is that the top is now dominated by large and very visible mechanical equipment. It's not very obvious at all from the street, but I happened to have spent the past year receiving physical therapy treatments on the 17th floor of the 1000 Broadway building, and from there it does not look so good. But that's because the redesign moved the mechanical equipment from where it had been hidden on the second floor: the second floor! That meant intake vents for fresh air were just one floor above Fifth Avenue and all the carbon monoxide coming from the Bus Mall. Now that space has been repurposed. And the equipment had to go somewhere. It's tempting to think of how the original design included some small little houses on top of the Portland Building that were not included in construction. In theory, those could have been introduced for the first time and used to house the equipment. But that would have been a step too far. I guess the rooftop mechanical is just the price that has to be aesthetically paid.  

 

The trident of Portlandia (Brian Libby)

 

One threat that has been hanging over the Portland Building restoration was that the approach would cause the National Park Service to rescind the building's National Register of Historic Places listing. It seems that might still happen. But you know what? It doesn't matter. We already know that the Portland Building as we see it today is not the same Portland Building that was completed in 1982. But we also know that it is small-H historic even if it's not officially capital-H historic. In fact, we know it's still far more historically significant than at least 90 percent of the National Register-listed structures in Portland. There are college-dropout friends of mine who are clearly more intelligent and learned than friends of mine with doctoral degrees. It's not about the piece of paper.

More importantly, rather than fixate on a historic or not-historic binary way of thinking, I'd rather we embrace the Portland Building as a hybrid of new and old. The more we are upfront about it being neither strictly old or strictly new, the more this work of architecture can be seen for what it is: something in between. That's not to say it is compromised but that it is a fusion. Maybe it's just the Herbie Hancock fan in me, but sometimes fusion can be even better its component parts.

I think that's the case here — so much so that it's actually arguable that the new Portland Building completes the original vision of Michael Graves and his team better than the building completed in 1982. Maybe this isn't a renovation so much as the decades-later final stage of the original building.

 

 

 

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Visiting Waechter Architecture's Blu Dot store, and exploring the Kerr Building's past

Blu Dot's Portland store (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A few weeks ago, I visited the new Blu Dot furnishings store as part of its grand opening. Or perhaps I should say I visited the new Blu Dot store in the circa-1921 Kerr Building. But only in being attracted by the store and its interior design did I then learn the building's name and its history, despite admiring it for many years.

The building and the store are right across the street from the better-known Wieden + Kennedy Building at NW 13th and Everett; it's  always been the building you see when exiting W+K itself or Bluehour restaurant, on the building's west side.

The Kerr Building is a handsome brick warehouse that's part of the broader 13th Avenue Historic District: the succession of former warehouse and industrial buildings that includes gems like the Chown Pella Lofts (1915) near 13th & Glisan, the Fisk Tire Company Building (1923) near 12th & Flanders, and the Armour Building (1910) at 13th & Flanders. After the 1905 Lewis & Clark exposition, this one-time residential area quickly became dotted with warehouses and industrial buildings.

 

Kerr Building, Armour Building, Chown Pella Lofts (Brian Libby)

 

As for Blu Dot, it's the first brick-and-mortar retail outlet in Oregon for this Minneapolis-based furnishings brand, which was co-founded in 1997 by John Christakos and Maurice Blanks (with Charlie Lazor) and has become one of America's most admired contemporary furniture brands. In 2018, for example, Blu Dot received a National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. The two were on hand for a tour of the store with Ben Waechter, whose firm, Waechter Architecture, designed the store.

Locating in the Pearl District was a no-brainer, Christakos explained, because the neighborhood is a bit of a furniture-store hot spot. "We like to be next door to our competitors," he said. "You buy furniture infrequently, and when you do, it’s nice to park once and be able to hit four or five spots in a row. We don’t want to be the one store that’s across town from that sort of controlled zone. This space was exactly the right size, good architecture. It was not in the best shape when we took it over, but perfect location, good size, good space."

 

Blu Dot founders Maurice Blanks and John Christakos (Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian)

 

The portion of the building occupied by Blu Dot, essentially a ground-floor space but raised a bit with a loading dock, had previously been partitioned as offices. But much of that had to go. The intent was to uncover this heavy timber-framed building's bones.

"When we all visited, and really probably why we gravitated toward the spaces, was just the beauty of the heavy timber structure, the beauty of the grid, the fact that it’s on the corner so you have daylight from two sides," Ben Waechter explained.

"After we demo’d it, it was like, ‘Wow, that’s really cool. How do we kind of keep that?’" Christakos added.

Waechter has a particular gift for bringing clarity to both interior and exterior spaces. On facades, he uses a minimum of trim to make even simple inexpensive materials look elegant. Indoors, there is often a sense of calm you get from how a whole room, from its floors to the walls to the ceiling, can be made to feel like one container.  Here in this old former 1920s warehouse, he recognized that the timber structure was worth calling attention too, but even after you took down the walls, there was still a lot of clutter, including a mezzanine that obstructed most of the double-height volume, a chunk taken up by the elevator and tenant entrance on Everett, and a bunch of mechanical equipment.

 

 

Blu Dot's Portland store (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

"How can we do a single gesture that incorporates and makes sense of those things that are impeding the beauty of the space in a clear way? Essentially it was making a ribbon around the space," Waechter explained. And sure enough, the signature move of the whole store design is really this curvy partitioning that forms both a kind of curtaining on the mezzanine (overall reduced in size) that hides a lot of that clutter, and also forms portions of the walls.

"You guys really solved a lot of problems with this," Blu Dot co-founder Maurice Blanks told Waechter during our tour. "It looks pretty straightforward, but we wanted it to be clearly separate from the heavy timber building, so the details of it had to be just right."

Both Waechter and the founders used the word "intervention" numerous times as we talked about this curvy wall and mezzanine form, as if aware that it's the first thing one's eye is drawn to as you enter the store. It brings to mind a balance perhaps any retailer is looking for: eye-catching design, but not too eye-catching. "This is a larger intervention for us than most of our stores," Christakos said. "The risk is that it becomes about the architecture and not the furniture. That didn’t happen here. I think it still ends up being a nice, quiet, interesting background. You notice it. It really elevates our stuff. But it’s not foreground."

 

Blu Dot's Portland store (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

Indeed, the gentle curve of Waechter's wall and mezzanine-screening surface becomes the sort of unspooling ribbon that leads one through the store, sometimes peeling back partially to reveal a carved-out furniture display on a platform or at the bank of windows. It looks a little bit like a stretched accordion, as if the whole thing could conceivably expand and retract. Even so, it does not compete with the furniture per se. The furniture is the only thing that isn't white. The floors and walls of the original building match the ribbon-screening, so the sofas and chairs and beds and tables provide the pops of color and texture. They also join with the ribbon as curvy alternatives to the rectilinear architectural container.

"We could have wrapped the outside with straight lines," Waechter explains, "but somehow visually and spatially it wouldn’t be a nice compliment to the rectilinear-ness of the grid."

As I left the Blu Dot store, however, it nagged at me that I didn't know this building's backstory. Luckily, though, the answer was easy to find because the Kerr Building is part of that aforementioned 13th Avenue Historic District, as bequeathed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. That meant the application can be found online, via the National Park Service, which administers the National Trust program.

This quarter-block site was purchased in 1909 by Alexander Kerr, who co-owned with his the Wadhams and Kerr Bros wholesale grocery company. Under the Monopole and Palace Car labels, Wadhams and Kerr Bros, packaged fruits, vegetables, fish, oysters, jellies, jams, peanut butter, olives, pickles, coffees, teas, spices, extracts, baking powder and other items, much of it in self-sealing mason jars that Kerr had patented. This became part of Kerr's other business located in the building: the Kerr Glass Jar Manufacturing Company (which has been bought and sold many times but survives today as part of the Dublin, Ireland-based Ardagh Group). They also all but invented the practice of shipping fruit juices in concentrate. Alexander Kerr also became a valued local philanthropist, founding the Albertina Kerr Nursery for orphaned children, which today is still in operation as the Albertina Kerr Center (which now serves children and adults with developmental disabilities).

 

 Kerr Building (Brian Libby)

 

However, the Kerr companies were not the only tenants, even at the beginning. One original tenant, for instance, was the Edison Phonograph Company, which occupied the first two floors (with Kerr above). The building was also an early location for the Sherwin-Williams Company. Developer Homer Williams and his company, Williams & Dame, also had their offices here.

The building was designed by the firm of Strong and MacNaughton, but that's somewhat misleading because it actually wasn't an architecture firm but rather engaged in asset management. Ernest Boyd MacNaughton (1880-1960) was trained as an architect and practiced locally many years after emigrating from Boston. From 1907-1910, he partnered with Ellis Lawrence, who went on to become one of Oregon's most esteemed early 20th century architects and founded the University of Oregon's School of Architecture and Allied Arts. But by the time MacNaughton's firm took on this Kerr Building commission, he was only keeping his toe in architecture while Strong and MacNaughton rose as a trust company. Within eight years of the Kerr Building's opening, MacNaughton had become a trustee of First National Bank and in 1932 its president. From 1948-52 he also served as president of Reed College and from 1947-50 was president of the Oregonian Publishing Company.

The building is (to paraphrase the National Register listing) clad in a white-colored brick laid in a stretcher bond and is divided vertically into three sections: the ground level, three upper floors capped with a parapet wall, molding and flat roof. The north and east-facing elevations are divided into six equal bays divided by brick piers. The upper story windows are groups of three double-hung, wood decorative concrete molding at the third-story level.

Next year, the Kerr Building will be celebrating its centennial. Though the Pearl District has gentrified from its days as an industrial district, in some ways perhaps stories like this one represent buildings coming full-circle. Blu Dot furniture is not cheap, but perhaps not quite as expensive as some high-end furniture brands it competes with. Regardless, it's just another commodity being sold here, and in that way not wildly different from phonographs or mason jars or paint, all of which have been associated with Kerr Building owners and tenants. And the architecture is able to endure for generations because it's well-built and flexible, and the combination of brick cladding and large windows is timeless.

 

Blu Dot's Portland store (Jeremy Bittermann)

 

By comparison, once you build cheaply, it's hard to go back and fix that. Look at the city's most famous work of architecture, the Portland Building, which is reopening this month after construction costs of over $100 million. That's for a building originally completed in 1984. The mayor at the time, Frank Ivancie, had campaigned on fiscal restraint and insisted that the Portland Building be built for far less per square foot than a conventional office building. Architect Michael Graves was eager enough to win the design competition that his firm was the only one of three competitors to propose a building for the proposed budget, but in order to do so, the designers and builders had to resort to compromise after compromise, which in turn caused the building to leak repeatedly over the decades, no matter how many times its painted-concrete facade was patched up. Only by completely re-cladding the whole building with an aluminum-covered rain screen system could the problem be solved once and for all.

By the time the Portland Building opened, the Kerr Building was already 63 years old: older than the Portland Building is now. I'm not saying it's better than the Portland Building. In terms of ambition and intent, they couldn't have been more different. One was utilitarian and industrial, the other a government office building packaged as a statement about architecture itself. But there is a kind of tortoise-and-hare theme that seems to emerge when you look at them in tandem.

Ultimately, I'm glad we have both: the fabric building and the attention-seeking confection. Maybe, then, what makes Waechter Architecture's Blu Dot store compelling, at least for me, is that in that curvy accordion partitioning — however functional it may be — the design introduces just a bit of confection to that humble, respectable host.

 

 

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Remembering Saul Zaik, last of the midcentury-modern greats

Saul Zaik, 2014 (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If I had but one thing to say to Saul Zaik right now, or one thing I could have said before his January 4 passing if I had it to do over again, it would definitely be this:

"You will not be forgotten."

I mention this promise because it's in response to a fear that this wonderfully talented and historically significant architect expressed to me on more than one occasion over the years. Saul Zaik believed he either was already or was in danger of becoming what he called "the forgotten man."

Maybe it was easy to feel insecure when you were a designer of modern houses in the 1950s trying to follow an act like Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon. After all, they were the pioneers of the Northwest Modern style in the 1930s with houses like Yeon's Watzek House in 1937 and Belluschi's Sutor House in 1938, both of which built on their time at the Rosetta Stone of Northwest Modern, the A.E. Doyle-designed Wentz Cottage from 1916 on the Oregon Coast. Yet neither Yeon or Belluschi was ultimately destined to be principally a house designer in the 1950s and '60s. By that time, Belluschi had graduated to much bigger buildings and was dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's architecture school. Yeon, though he was still designing houses, also had broader concerns and interests, be it protecting Oregon's natural wonders or collecting art and designing museum exhibits.

Into that void came Zaik and the 14th Street Gang.

Born in 1926, Saul Zaik was a native Portlander who upon graduation from Benson Polytechnic entered World War II as a US Navy radio operator, aboard a transport ship in the Pacific. After the war, he attended the University of Oregon on the GI Bill, earning his architecture degree in 1952. He worked for a trio of small firms his first two years and then at 28 joined the Portland office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

 

Zaik in an undated photo (Legacy.com)

 

This was a seminal period for the SOM office, which had previously been the office by Pietro Belluschi before being sold to the legendary New York and Chicago firm. What's more, SOM Portland was about to produce two Oregon landmarks: Memorial Coliseum in Portland and Autzen Stadium in Eugene. But ultimately his time was short. In 1955, Zaik was set to marry his fiancée, Frances (Chris) Lowry. As he later recalled, the head of the office implied his job might be in jeopardy if he took a honeymoon. Zaik decided this was a good time to accept some of the home-design commissions he'd been offered.

By 1956 Zaik had started his own practice, first working out of his home and soon office space in an old Victorian home on NW 14th with a group fellow University of Oregon grads: William Fletcher, Donald Blair, John Reese, Frank Blachly, Alex Pierce, and interior designer George Schwarz. Known as the 14th Street Gang, They each had their own projects but often collaborated and helped each other. They shared drinks and ideas, and eventually helped popularize the Northwest Modern style that had begun with Yeon and Belluschi.

During this time, Zaik produced some of his most acclaimed residential designs, such as 1956’s Feldman House, which is my favorite of his works, with its low-pitched gable roof, exposed wood ceiling and cedar siding.

1A House (Bob Zaikoski), Feldman House (Brian Libby)

 

"[My generation of architects] were all World War II veterans, and we were out to change the idea of architecture," Zaik told me for a 2015 Dwell article on the Feldman House and its renovation (overseen by Jessica Helgerson Interior Design). "We were really just building boxes with a bunch of windows but experimenting with how you integrated indoor and outdoor spaces." 

But the Feldman is just one example. Zaik’s own house, completed in 1959, is also a delight, with a bridge connecting public and private pavilions.

 

1A House (Bob Zaikoski), Zaik Residence (Brian Libby)

 

Zaik was decades ahead of his time with the prefabricated 1-A House, a collaboration with the American Lumber Company that after its 1965 completion received an award from Better Homes and Gardens.  A number of the houses were built in the Cedar Hills area. Priced at $17,500 — the equivalent of $142,000 in 2019 dollars, adjusted for inflation—the houses provided value and style.

There's also the exceptional Fort House, which was renovated a few years ago, and the handsome Bigley House. And given the nostalgia that exists online for eye-catching, over-the-top 1960s houses, the Zidell House, which Zaik designed for Arnold Zidell with the home perched on a tall, thin ship’s mast made from a decommissioned Liberty Ship from World War II, is still surprising to encounter on Marquam Hill.

 

Fort House (Redfin), Zidell House (Portland Modern)

 

A 1973 portrait of Zaik in Symposia magazine started out with this description: “When one thinks of Oregon architecture one immediately envisions weathered wood structures resembling Willamette Valley farm buildings. The Oregon architect of the current generation most sympathetic and skilled with this vernacular is Saul Zaik of Portland. His residences, condominiums and apartments are to be found throughout Oregon, and like his predecessors Pipes, Brookman, Yeon and Belluschi, a Zaik home is easily identifiable. The shapes of his structures are sometimes complex, but always the roof lines are simple, and the resulting building is an easily understood statement of its use and its site.”

In a more recent interview, for the documentary Coast Modern seven years ago, Zaik said: "Four people can live very nicely in a 2,000-square-foot house. You don't need 20,000 feet. But when I talk to my son and to other architects...people want to live in that McMansion. But to live in a box with little windows punched out looking at your neighbor and a huge TV screen, that's their beauty is in that damn TV screen. I think people have to learn a little bit more about how they want to live in a house. What we should be thinking about is our environment and the fact that it does all relate. Wouldn't it be better if we had more of a connection?"

Saul Zaik didn't just design houses. He and his collaborators also worked on several renovations of historic Oregon landmarks, including  Vista House at Crown Point, additions to Timberline Lodge and Crater Lake Lodge. The Timberline addition was so seamless that today people forget it's not part of the original. His residential work also included renovations of houses designed by masterful local architects like Wade Pipes and Herman Brookman. 

Yet I haven't even arrived yet at what may be the best thing about Saul Zaik: the fact that he was so committed as an architect, so loving of his craft, that he continued coming to work right up until the end. Zaik certainly wasn't the first architect to work into his 90s. Thanks to famous architects like Philip Johnson and Frank Gehry, or Frank Lloyd Wright before them, the notion of an aging but still-practicing architect is practically a cliché. Yet it's still uncommon, for an architect or a member of any other profession. As someone who has always yearned to be liberated from the pressures of making a living, I'm blown away by people coming to work who don't have to. Yet you can see in this video by Bob Zaikoski, featuring an interview with Zaik about his drawing, that this wasn't a job. It was fun that he got paid for.

 

"Architect Saul Zaik" (Bob Zaikoski)

 

Over the years, I had the good fortune to get to know Saul Zaik in a series of conversations. He used to call me from time to time, eager to talk about architecture. The word that comes to mind is irrepressible. He was getting older, and his gait was pretty slow, but his mind was always sharp. I think he felt like he was still making the case for himself, even though he had been named an AIA Fellow way back in 1973, the year after I was born. And it's true: some of his best houses have been altered over time, and there's not yet any book that re-photographs all his work and puts the totality of his career in context.

Yet the architecture itself still compels. The thing is that Saul Zaik's houses, like those of other Northwest Modern contemporaries who followed Yeon and Belluschi such John Storrs, William Fletcher and Van Evera Bailey, are really what completed the promise of that earlier generation. I'm a tennis fan, and it reminds me of what's called consolidating the break. Yeon and Belluschi started something, but it only really became a genre when the next generation continued and expanded the vision. Zaik's houses weren't happening in a vacuum. Earlier this year, I wrote about a midcentury house in Spokane that was quite similar looking to Zaik's Feldman House. These designs became something larger than any one architect: a regional movement in a time when Modernism was rendering local vernaculars largely obsolete. They took international Modernism and made a version of it that was our own.

We'll never forget that, Saul, and—rest assured, my friend—we'll never forget you.

 

 

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The Wieden + Kennedy Headquarters at (nearly) 20: a conversation with Brad Cloepfil

Wieden + Kennedy Agency World Headquarters (Nicolai Kruger Studio)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In a few months, Portland's most acclaimed work of 21st century architecture will celebrate its 20th anniversary. That would be the Wieden + Kennedy Agency World Headquarters, designed by Allied Works. From a 1908 warehouse first built for the Fuller Paint Company and long serving as a cold-storage warehouse with its windows and doors bricked over, architect Brad Cloepfil and his firm created something wondrous.

Recently, as part of an interview for my podcast, In Search of Portland, I talked with  Cloepfil about the W+K building and how it helped launch the firm, which has gone on to design a host of acclaimed buildings around the country including the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, and the National Music Centre of Canada in Calgary. You can listen to the whole episode, which includes an additional interview with Wieden + Kennedy veteran Danny Sheniak, here or here. But below is an abridged transcript of the conversation with Cloepfil.

Portland Architecture: I admire how the W+K building keeps a low profile on the outside—the exterior of the 1908 warehouse is kept pretty much intact—before this atrium opens up to you inside. It reminds me of something I've heard you talk about before that I'd like to ask you about again: the influence of Oregon’s landscape. Here we learn to be reverential towards natural wonders first. Do you still think that's the case?

Growing up in Oregon when I did, one could say I think without being too harsh that it’s not a place where buildings have tremendous presence. The presence comes from other forces and other things. And so I think just as a kid growing up, or as any layperson, the first places that moved you were probably landscape. I remember in high school, I had a Triumph TR-4. I would drive from Carlton over the Coast Range down the Nestucca River, just to get away. That was my sort of solitude, pilgrimage. And I’ve had various ones over the years. I’m going to the Strawberry Mountains tomorrow. But I think it’s only because you are drawn to what moves you, and the first thing that really moved me was landscape.

But then you ultimately came to be moved by not only great architecture but especially visual art, as well, which probably informs Allied's designing several art museums.

I’ve never been a real student of architecture, actually. Never been necessarily even a follower of architecture. But I am drawn to beautiful places, powerful places. When I went to Europe for the first time—what was I, a junior in college?—I actually was able walk into rooms that moved me for a first time: Gothic cathedrals, Roman ruins, medieval cities. So that sense of landscape, awe and wonder that’s here was translated to buildings. And it all kind of came together: the pursuit came together.

 

Brad Cloepfil (Allied Works)

 

What about the early days of Allied Works? You’re full of ideas but maybe having to do kitchens and bathrooms at first. I think of the Saucebox restaurant and bar on Broadway as a milestone. How do you reflect on those early days? Somebody like Bruce Carey had to take a chance on you, right?

I love Bruce but I’m not giving him that much credit. In Saucebox he asked me to remodel the bathrooms and bring them up to handicap code. That’s what I was hired for. And I convinced him that he actually needed to remodel the whole restaurant. I mean, architecture is a funny business. It’s really a vocational trade. I think a lot of people go into architecture just for the joy of crafting things. So you do a kitchen remodel or a bathroom remodel, but there’s still an intense gratification of just making something better, you know, and just doing it really well and making it viscerally beautiful. No one goes into architecture without that love of just…that kind of banal joy of just making something better like that.

But it was really when I got the Wieden + Kennedy. That was the first patronage project, where the door to ideas was just  wide open, and all I had to do was walk through.

 

W+K Agency World Headquarters (Allied Works)

 

What is the talent you have in, say, an interview process? You have to be a charmer or at least a good communicator to convince the client. You had to kind of charm Dan Wieden and others, and make them believe. You have to sell them on your ideas. The St. Louis Contemporary people said you were very good at that, and in the interview you just started drawing. What was the W+K interview process like?

I don’t think I’m a very good salesperson, to tell you the truth. I mean, I would have a much bigger office if I was. And I compete against some people who are really masterful, so I know what the masters’ sales look like, but I won’t name names.

Maybe ‘sell’ is the wrong word. Persuasion, let’s say, or just the art of sharing your vision.

Yes. My passion is ideas, so if I have some insight about the nature of the problem or the possibilities of something, then I get excited. And when I get excited, it’s like anything else: you can be compelling. You have to be interested and excited: you have to have something to day.

And did you have a firm idea going into that W+K interview of what you felt like the building wanted?

We didn’t even have a building. I didn’t know anything. They interviewed me three times. All I knew was they were in eight different buildings downtown and they wanted to be in one building. We didn’t know what building or where, or anything else. Three interviews, and I think the one that really maybe convinced them—and John was in this interview as well—is I had a book on Donald Judd’s studio in Marfa, and I basically or literally just passed the book around and said, ‘Don’t we all just want to work in that space?’ Right? Which is true. And I think the fact that I wasn’t talking about office space or anything but just a kind of beautiful place to work in, with amazing space and amazing light, I think that got to them. Because architecture is such a jargon-filled field, and especially workspace: oh my God.

 

A wood model and the completed W+K (Allied Works)

 

So what about looking at this 1908 cold storage warehouse and how you might transform it?

I kind of discovered it, I guess. I was driving by and they were just starting to tear the…the openings were all bricked in because it was a cold storage building and they were just starting to tear those open. I thought, ‘Maybe we could fit in there.’ That was after we had done some initial programming to understand how big they needed to be, because they had no idea how big a space they were looking for. They had just hired an architect. Some I reached out to them, found out probably through realtors, whatever. I showed it to Dan. I remember we were walking through and he literally said, ‘There’s no way in hell we’re moving into this building.’ That’s a quote. ‘Are you crazy?’ And on and on. I said, ‘Just let me show you what’s possible.’

Obviously the atrium is the centerpiece, and it’s easy to think that design of it just fell into place. But I remember your first employees at Allied, Chris Bixby and John Weil, telling me the design went through different iterations and there was more than one concept.

I sort of saw the building as a piece of clay that we could carve up and perforate and puncture. And so we looked at it that way. My charcoal sketches were that way. We did models of the whole building by cutting up blocks of individual offices and conference rooms and stacking them up to equal the massing and show the kind of transparencies and light wells and openings. We must have studied that building a hundred different ways, to tell you the truth. Great fun, you know? Really, really fun. So we reduced it two or three different examples and Dan chose the one [with the atrium]. I drew the atrium as the most obvious one. It’s the one I did not want—adamantly did not want. But Dan chose it because he wanted everybody to be in one room. He wanted everybody to be in that one space together. That was his desire.

 

Massing study and wood model of W+K (Allied Works)

 

What design did you want him to choose?

You’d have to look at the drawings, but it had a kind of pinwheel of openings that interlocked. It was more spatially complex, and probably more spatially interesting, but it wouldn’t have served them at all. Dan did this two or three times in the process, where he was maddeningly right: where I was adamantly disagreeing with him and he ended up being right. But once we got into it, we saw the potential of that single room, and it was pretty exciting.

What makes the right kind of client? You want freedom from constraints and criticism, but sometimes that push-back makes the work better.

I think with public arts—film, architecture, whatever else—that rub, the rub of dialogue, the wearing down of forces if you will, is required to really offer something to the public that’s engaging. It’s not like making art. Making art is an individual act. It really is just for the artist. If offers us insights, we consider it to be better and good and profound. But film, theater, certainly architecture requires, I think, that process of kind of grinding away. And if it doesn’t happen with the clients we do it internally.

 

Interior of W+K (Allied Works)

 

What are people responding to in the W+K building design? It’s more than just an atrium with light and volume. I’ve actually called it a secular cathedral. How would you describe the impact it has?

It’s so interesting you say that, because one of the high points when the building was done was when I was walking through the building with a Presbyterian minister. He said, "You made a church." It was one of the greatest compliments. I think back to the landscape of my youth, back the cathedrals of my college days: I think the pursuit of the ineffable…I think in a way all my spaces aspire to be spiritual space. Because I think we call it that because they are spaces that move you, that have a sense of wonder, that can’t be summarized in an image or in a sentence. There’s a quality that you just can’t quite describe. And we don’t know that when we’re designing it. We’re aspiring to that. We hope it will have those layers of perception and meaning experience and the kind of richness over time—all of that—that you really have no idea until it’s done. I mean it’s a simple concrete box inserted in a block. But there’s something about it that is more than that, more than the sum of its parts. That’s what you hope.

It’s been nearly 20 years since W+K...

Wow.

...and Allied has designed a lot of big landmark projects in that time. Did W+K set you up for that? Would the Brad just off W+K thought of where you are now?

No, it’s incomprehensible, actually. We were just taking about that with the addition to Providence Park. I had no idea I’d be here today, absolutely no idea. Dan giving me that opportunity, when I said yes when I had two employees, John and Chris, it really set everything in motion. When the people from the St. Louis Contemporary came to Portland and walked the building, the building wasn’t even done yet. But I walked them through that space, and the building kind of closed the deal. And it still has that impact on clients. It doesn’t matter if they’re asking for a museum or an office. It’s just the quality of that space that is so moving.

 

 

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Restoring Portland's oldest commercial building: a conversation with John Russell and Brian Emerick

Rendering of the soon-to-be-restored Hallock-McMillan building (Emerick Architects)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

As we reclaim more of Naito Parkway for bicyclists and pedestrians by making the annual summertime Better Naito configuration permanent, and following the restoration of cast-iron waterfront beauties like the White Stag Block and the Smith Block in years past, the oldest commercial building in the city, the Hallock-McMillan building from 1857, is finally getting restored and seismically stabilized.

What's more, the Hallock-McMillan, named for architect Absalom Hallock and builder William McMillan, his partner, who were responsible for the building, is now being restored using an innovative structural system that actually connects it with two other adjacent buildings. That makes for a potential precedent that could point the way to how other unreinforced-masonry buildings might be given earthquake protection a bit more cost-effectively.

As I was reminded in a recent conversation with building owner John Russell and Emerick Architects co-founder Brian Emerick, restoring the Hallock-McMillan has been, to borrow from a one of my favorite songs, a long and winding road. This blog first looked at Russell's restoration intentions eight years ago in a post by Fred Leeson.

 

Minor White's shot of the Hallock-McMillin in the 1940s (Emerick Architects)

 

Russell's interest in the building goes back to the early 1980s, when he leased the equally historic and perhaps even more beautiful structure next door, the Feichheimer & White building, dating to 1885 and featuring a cast-iron ornamental facade. (The Hallock-McMillan once had cast-iron facade ornamentation too, but it has been stripped away.) He eventually came to own the Feichheimer & White a building around the corner, from the Hallock-McMillan, the Dielschneider Building at 79 SW Oak Street.

"And then," explained Russell, "the obvious: How do I get ahold of the building that connects them? It was owned by a trust for the Longshoremen Union, upstairs on the second floor. [Former Portland City Council member] Randy Leonard remembers going up there as a kid with his father looking for work." But another buyer, Peter Corvallis, beat Russell to the purchase; Corvallis started using the Hallock-McMillan as a storage space for his party-rental business. When Russell took possession of 79 Oak, which Corvallis leased offices in, he raised Corvallis's rent, in hopes it could convince him to sell Hallock-McMillan. "Corvallis was pissed at me for doing that. But he still ran the Hallock and McMillan as a storage space for video equipment," Russell added. "It was just packed full of crap. All these years he resisted my efforts to buy it, until I got a call one day from his brother in law. He and I negotiated the sale over lunch in Milwaukie." The Hallock-McMillan was sold for about $700,000.

 

In 2011 (Fred Leeson) and under reconstruction today (Emerick Architects)

 

The Hallock-McMillan isn't just the oldest commercial building city. (Russel was given a photo of the building upon construction when it was the only building on a then-dirt road.) Its designer, Absalom Hallock, is known as Oregon's first professional architect. He and contractor William McMillan established the firm of Hallock & Company in 1852.

As explained in an Oregon Encyclopedia entry by Patricia Failing, the firm attracted prominent Portland patrons, including future mayor and major landholder William Ladd, who hired Hallock and McMillan in 1853 to design and construct the city’s first brick building (located on Front Street—today Naito Parkway between Stark and Washington but demolished in 1940). The partners also designed and built early homes for Oregon Supreme Court Justice Cyrus Olney and shipping tycoon George Flanders.

I've heard from one source that Hallock literally received a State of Oregon architect registration stamp marked 001, but Oregon didn't even become a state until two years after this building was completed. At the time of the Hallock-McMillan building's completion, there were no licensing requirements for local architects. So if he was registered architect 001, registration would have come after this building. In any case, he designed at least 18 early Portland brick buildings, as well as the Washington County Courthouse in Hillsboro, completed in 1852 (and since demolished). Hallock also served on Portland’s city council on and off from 1857, the year of the building's completion, until 1873, during which time he also acted as street commissioner, city surveyor, council president, and even a volunteer firefighter. Decades later, an Oregonian article from 1900 referred to Hallock as a “political boss” who “came near running the city.”

 

Absalom Hallock (Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Orhi9824)

 

Talking with Russell and Emerick, I also noted that while some of the Hallock-McMillan building's ornament had been removed generations ago, including the trio of cast-iron arches on the ground floor, and even in its restored form, it has less ornament than the later Feichheimer & White completed 28 years later.

"The urge for detail is a Victorian thing," Russell reasoned. "What you see is the beginning of the Victorian era and the end of it in the two buildings."

Added Emerick: "What’s interesting to me about cast-iron architecture is it’s actually much more modern than what comes afterward. This is basically like a modern structure. They’re using steel to create a wall of glass on the Feichheimer building. Then it goes more into stone and masonry like the Dekum Building [from 1892]."

Perhaps what's most interesting about the Hallock-McMillan restoration is the replication process for the cast-iron facade, which involved architect and architectural historian William Hawkins using historic photos and researching the ornament of other 1800s Oregon commercial buildings to create new drawings from which new moldings for the cast iron could be created. The original cast iron was cast in San Francisco, the nearest foundry at the time.

 

Cast iron detail studies by William J. Hawkins (Emerick Architects)

 

Did I just say the facade was being replicated with actual cast iron again? It surprised Russell too. But that's what happened at the Silverton Foundry, where furnaces heat scrap metal to 2800 degrees and pour the molten liquid into sand-cast molds.

"I assumed that they would fashion these things out of fiberglass," he said. "Then the second choice was cementitious material, because you can cast it. But it turns out fiberglass is damaged really quickly if it’s exposed to the light. If you have a fiberglass casting, and there’s a chip in it, sunlight will destroy it. The problem with cementitious material is if it gets damaged you can never really repair it. Cast iron: this old, old, old, technology? You’ve got to be kidding me. But it turns out it is the best material."

In a way, replicating the original historic facade elements could be construed to be going against historic preservation strictures, which call for any new physical additions or alterations to be distinct as contemporary interventions. The Hallock-McMillan restorers are essentially making a 1857 building rebuilt in 2019 look like an 1857 building that simply stayed in good condition. Even so, I think it's pretty hard to argue with restoring the cast-iron details as faithfully as possible, and it seems off-base if not silly to call this effort inauthentic in any way.

There's one touch of modernity to the renovation, or at least a modern material: glass. For a former loading derrick turned asphalt courtyard in the back of the Hallock-McMillan between it and the Dielschneider building, currently blocked off by a non-original masonry wall, the Emerick Architects design instead adds a glass wall. It was approved by the Landmarks Commission.  "You’ll be able see the three walls of the three buildings that make that courtyard space," Brian Emerick explains. "It became an obvious place for ADA access and intervention without altering the history."

 

Rendering of the glass wall behind the Hallock-McMillan (Emerick Architects)

 

I then asked owner and architect to tell me more about this unique three-building structural system.

"We rebuilt this whole thing with a concrete moment frame," Emerick explained. "We want to build it to last. There’s steel inside. There was previous seismic upgrading of the Feichheimer building. We’ve connected it to this [building]. The Hallock is designed to take lateral load off the Feichheimer building. By being able to anchor into this building, we‘ve essentially got one 50-foot-long façade. But on the other side  we’ve got sheer-wall brace frames that connect into this [other] building [79 Oak]. We’ll brace this building and cast this three-story elevator tower that will provide additional bracing in an east-west direction. It’s pretty unique to take one building and strengthen two others."

Renovation work is continuing on the Hallock-McMillan, but I believe it will be done this year, and will become leasable office space and part of Russell's broader portfolio. It's a relief because if the region really is destined to face a major earthquake in the years ahead, we've got to seismically upgrade these priceless few historic cast-iron buildings that weren't demolished for parking lots in the mid-20th century. Buildings like the Hallock-McMillan were once part of a collection of beautiful old buildings lining Front, First and Second and their cross streets.

There also seems to be modest progress being made on the waterfront, where new buildings are going up on Naito for the first time in years. It's always been an under-walked street, too car-centric to be pleasant. But as more businesses locate here and the street gets tamed a bit more, the timing for a Hallock-McMillan coming out party may be ideal. And even if recession should come and it takes time to fill it, a building like this has survived worse. It's meant to prosper again.

 

 

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Height considered in the Pearl and Old Town

Rendering of proposed Hyatt Place (Otak via City of Portland/Next Portland)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In any big city, planners have a puzzle to put together: an ongoing challenge to accommodate the future city into the existing one. It's not an easy task, but with Portland projected to add hundreds of thousands of new residents in the coming decades, we've got to increase density. Yet how we do so is really the question.

With Old Town and the Pearl District adjacent to downtown and part of the central city, it's natural to add density to both neighborhoods. Which is precisely what the Central City 2035 plan does. But two different recent appeals cases, one in the Pearl and one involving Old Town, make for an interesting referendum.

First there is the case of Hyatt Place, a proposed 23-story tower that would be located on a quarter-block site at NW 12th Avenue and Flanders Street. The lower 11 floors would be occupied by a 170-room hotel, and the upper 12 floors would be apartments, with the project subject to the city's inclusionary zoning laws calling for a portion of the residential units to be affordable.

A group of citizens called Pearl Neighbors for Integrity in Design opposed the project based mostly on height, although they also cite a lack of parking and congestion that would plague a soon-to-be busy bike crossing.

Recently I spoke with one of the leaders of the group, Patricia Cliff, who expressed opposition to the greater heights now allowed in the southern Pearl District after passage of Central City 2035.

"The question I ask is how can you pass a law like this? The Pearl is mostly a residential area," Cliff said. "To just raise the height of anything everywhere, and to allow the FAR [transfer] from another building, that issue I find challengeable.” 

“There was this whole idea the city has to be denser and higher,” she added. “A lot of people don’t want this to look like Vancouver: that anybody can buy the air rights of some garage and sandwich it onto a high-rent district."

Cliff says she sympathizes with the need to address a shortage of affordable housing, and that increasing supply benefits the market overall. But she says some of CC2035's logic is faulty…for starters.  "Central City 2035 is over 700 pages. It is very contradictory," she added. "It argues you have to have density and height, but you can have density without height. Look at all these surface parking lots. There’s no shortage of buildable land here. It doesn’t mean you need hotels with 280 units on a quarter block to solve the housing problem."

Actually, the fact that this 23-story building would be built on just a quarter block is part of what makes the project intriguing and possibly even a positive contribution to our skyline, such as it is. Designed by Otak, the renderings show a metal and glass building that appears fairly unremarkable: a contemporary structure built up to the property line to maximize profits and a more welcoming ground plane to compensate. But it's a slender building compared to so many in Portland's downtown core, and that makes it somewhat aesthetically appealing.

 

Rendering of proposed Hyatt Place (Otak via Next Portland/City of Portland)

 

Last week I took a short business trip to Seattle, which had me mostly downtown and in the burgeoning South Lake Union district as well as the Fremont neighborhood just across the water to the north. It got me thinking.

In many ways Seattle and Portland are different cities with different personalities: one an ambitious ocean port of nearly four million, the other a river city of just under two and a half million. Seattle has always had taller buildings than Portland because Seattle unabashedly wants to show the world how big and important it is. Portland has long had height limits for fear of overwhelming views of Mt. Hood and our beautiful landscape. But those Seattle towers look better, as a whole, because they’re slenderer.

Besides, Portland is also, like its neighbor to the north, growing fairly rapidly. If we want to avoid urban growth boundary expansion and allow more sprawl, we have to grow denser. But Cliff is right that density does not equal height. So what's the right density/height balance in the Pearl, Old Town and downtown?

The Hyatt Place location at 12th and Flanders is an interesting one because it's close to downtown yet also close to a historic district. Looking at the location on a map, it's easy to see why planners and developers would imagine 23 stories here. Just a few blocks south at 12th and Washington is the Twelve West building, completed in 2009, and a block away there are plans to build the Eleven West building (both designed by ZGF on former Goodman family-owned surface parking lots). Both are over 20 stories and comparable to the height of Hyatt Place as proposed. And Cliff’s claim that the Pearl is mostly residential doesn’t completely hold water. In fact, Pearl offices are somewhat of a trend.

Over the past few years the northern Pearl District has been a place for somewhat taller towers because it was built on the site of former rail yards with not much of an existing context: no fabric of smaller existing buildings. The southern Pearl, on the other hand, was redeveloped from a former industrial district of low-rise warehouses. In fact, for several blocks beginning right across the street from the proposed Hyatt Place and heading north is a strip of blocks called the 13th Avenue Historic District.

Does a building site outside but adjacent to a historic district have a responsibility to stay substantially lower than 20-plus stories out of a need for compatibility? I don't think so. It's true we don't want a situation like the movie Up, where a single-family home is bookended by towers. Yet often it's precisely the juxtaposition of buildings of different eras, styles and even heights that makes a city interesting. I'm glad those old warehouses of the 13th Avenue Historic District are protected. But that doesn't mean a building between them or just down the street needs to look like the old warehouses more than it needs to look like downtown. What we need is for those old warehouses to be protected from demolition at all costs. If that happens, they can hold their own.

What I do find an interestingly ambiguous question is where exactly the threshold for new-building height compatibility with old low-rise buildings is. For example, Cliff mentioned living in the nearby Casey Condominiums, which are 16 stories. She mentioned hating how the Yard building across the river, at 21 stories, had spoiled her view, and that's a height similar to the 23-story proposed Hyatt Place. Is it that the threshold lies somewhere between 16 and 21 stories?

A cynic might suggest it's the location: Hyatt would partially block views east from the Casey. But I'm not interested in just painting Cliff and Pearl Neighbors for Integrity in Design as only about NIMBY-ism. They do make a good larger point: that while it may be easy to imagine the southern Pearl coming to resemble downtown, ultimately it's not downtown, and because there are still existing surface lots across the central city, it’s hard to argue that substantially increasing building heights from 16 to 20-plus towers is necessary strictly from a density-minded point of view.

The other factor here that lends an element of credence to Cliff and the PNID's argument is the influence of developers on the system: not in an illegal way, but perhaps in a way that makes one slightly uncomfortable about campaign-donation-oriented political influence.

This is where we cross Broadway and head from the Pearl into Old Town, which is a larger historic district and has an existing fabric of late 29th and early 20th century buildings—the few not torn down by the post-World War II generation in the '50s and '60s—that comprise some of the most unique and priceless architectural fabric in the city.

Earlier this month the Land Use Board of Appeals sided with plaintiffs Restore Oregon, the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, the Oregon Nikkei Endowment and other petitioners in their case against the City of Portland, Guardian Real Estate Services and others.

After two years of public process during the creation of Central City 2035, City of Portland staff had recommended a maximum height of 125 feet (about 12 stories). But in April 2018, City Council voted to spot-zone one specific vacant lot in Old Town known as Block 33 (bounded by NW Couch, Davis, Fourth and Fifth) to a maximum height of 160 feet. The owner/developer of the property, Guardian, argued they could not make a profit with a building at 125 feet.

Perhaps that limit seemed even more egregious given that some adjacent blocks were zoned to allow 425 feet in height. Then in May of last year, a month after going from 125 to 160 at Block 33, City Council voted to decrease those additional four blocks from 450 to 200 feet. It’s as if they realized the height-offer wasn’t being accepted just down the street, so they gave it to Block 33 and made it all uniform. But they also raised height in other parts of Old Town from 125 to 200 feet.

One caveat from the LUBA decision was the judge concluded that while the city didn’t quite justify a 200-foot maximum height limit, nor did Restore Oregon et al. successfully argue that the 200-foot limit automatically violates the Portland Comprehensive Plan, which calls for continuity with established development patterns in a district.

“Remand is required for the city to adopt findings that are adequate to explain why the 200-foot height limit complies with PCP Policy 4.48,” the decision reads. “That decision must be supported by an adequate factual base. Accordingly, we do not address Restore Oregon's arguments that a  200-foot maximum height limit categorically fails to comply with PCP Policy 4.48.”

One doubts this is over. The deadline for the parties to file replies with the Oregon Court of Appeals is August 27: today.

Even so, I find myself continually struggling with the question of how a district of mostly low-rise buildings can grow while maintaining some hard-to-quantify balance where the buildings get taller, in keeping with population and density growth—but not too much taller. At the end of the day I’m inclined to side with the preservationists, because they’re not driven by profit. City planners may correctly argue that we need to add density if we’re going to avoid sprawl, but the most influential people on their side seem to be developers looking to make money.

In the case of Block 33, one could look at it on the map and make largely the same argument for height being made at the Hyatt Place site in the Pearl: that it’s a stone’s throw from downtown, where the buildings are taller. Why not graduate down in height as we across Burnside north?

Yet in the case of Old Town, not only is there the existing fabric of historic 19^th and early 20^th century buildings but also its presence along the river. Before the South Waterfront district, Portland had a fairly long tradition of stepping down in height to the river.

The argument in South Waterfront, that view corridors would still exist between the towers, turned out to be fallacy as all the gaps got filled in. But today it does seem that the principle of stepping down to the river is no longer believed to be sacrosanct.

What ultimately seems like a bigger disappointment in South Waterfront is not the somewhat tall towers at the riverfront but the lack of a larger public greenspace and public amenities there. It should be a continuation of Tom McCall Waterfront Park (or a public space equally valuable) and it’s not.

Ultimately the great old buildings of Old Town can hold their own against 125-foot-heigh buildings that may be more than twice their height. Can they hold their own beside 200-foot (approximately 20-story) buildings? There are excellent examples of buildings that can be contemporary yet compatible, and at a scale commensurate with the old cast-iron buildings, such as the upcoming ZGF-designed PAE Living Building. I can see how some might say 200 feet creates too great a disparity. But I would happily allow this in exchange for something these old buildings need more than for their neighborhood height to be limited: they need to be not only protected from demolition no matter the circumstance, but we need to give owners of these buildings the resources to seismically strengthen them.

 

Rendering of PAE Living Building (ZGF via City of Portland/Next Portland)

 

Today it’s arguably the threat of earthquake that is most endangering the buildings of Old Town, not the shadows cast by taller buildings. It never happens this way, but I wish we could trade more allowable height for two things: much more stringent historic-preservation laws at the city and state level, and increased subsidies for historic buildings made of unreinforced masonry.

Whether near the waterfront in Old Town or in the Pearl both in and out of the 13^th Avenue Historic District, it is the old warehouses and mixed-use structures that represent something Portland is lacking compared to older cities: layers of history, not just architectural but of the people who occupied them. We may differ about exactly how to design and build the buildings that sit beside them: their height, their materiality. But the important thing is to protect and preserve the buildings themselves.

Does that mean we should allow Hyatt Place at 23 stories? Not necessarily, because it’s true that density does not have to equal height, as Cliff argued. And we don’t want a whole neighborhood of 20-plus-story buildings, which in turn makes the old ones valuable not just for their history but for their relatively modest scale. Yet it also means the Wieden + Kennedy building a few blocks away, renovated from the early 20^th century Fuller Paint building, will be just fine even if it’s under more shadow, and that people living in towers are often destined to lose their views, because that’s what they sign up for.

Ultimately what we want is not just puzzle pieces that fit together but a variety of shapes and sizes and scales of puzzle pieces. What’s a puzzle if it’s not intricate?

And across Burnside I think it’s time to allow a new scale of height downtown. I’d love to see Portland’s first downtown tower to eclipse the Wells Fargo building and the US Bancorp Tower and go over 60 stories. But in return, let’s not let tragedies occur like the demolition of the historic Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple, which not only was a wonderful work of expensive-to-renovate unreinforced masonry and gorgeous Richardsonian Romanesque style but a needed foothill to the glass and steel mountains.

I say let’s allow the mountains and the foothills, as long as we better protect the foothills, and encourage developers to keep building both, with—to continue the analogy—plenty of valleys (parks) in between. The best cities and natural areas alike come with plenty of changes in elevation.

 

 

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Auditing the Portland Building reconstruction, pre-completion

The Portland Building under construction, 6/20/19 (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In an article for CityLab published yesterday, I wrote about the latest in a long line of controversial moments for the Portland Building, that flawed landmark of Postmodernist architecture that is now in the final stages of a transformative renovation and reconstruction.

This latest round of press, not just my article but a host of different national design publications and local media, has resulted from an announcement by the City of Portland's independent auditor, Mary Hull Caballero, found a lack of transparency as the budget has grown to $214 million and equity grants not been given out. What really interested me, though was the audit's finding that from a historic preservation perspective, the project was "on track to meet the baseline renovation goals but will fall short of other aspirations.” In particular, “the exterior design chosen to address water leaks will result in the circa-1982 building’s de-listing from the National Register of Historic Places.”

I was surprised by this last part of the audit, because when I wrote about the renovation design by DLR Group in 2017 for an article in Architect magazine, I remember the city's spokesperson, Kristin Wells of the City of Portland’s Office of Management and Finance, making it clear that they were willing to lose the building's National Register listing in order to pursue an over-cladding to the original concrete facade in order to stop the leaks once and for all. "In our kickoff meeting, the first thing we said was, ‘We will absolutely solve our envelope issues—period’,” Wells explained in that article.

What I wanted to know about the audit and its criticism was whether anyone from the City of Portland, as the Portland Building's owner, had ever explicitly, in writing or verbally, identified the National Register listing itself as the measuring stick for honoring the historic integrity of the building. I posed this question to city  auditor Tenzin Gonta, who works under Caballero. She cited project records “that reference historic integrity being part of scope. Each references the listing on the National Register as background about the building but not maintenance of that status as a specific goal.” That was what the audit was criticizing the City of Portland for: not losing or potentially losing the National Register listing, but rather in not coming out and explicitly saying it was worth paying that price.

"It’s not the auditor’s job to say, ‘This is or isn’t historic preservation.’ But if you go back, the team [of client and architect] really presented it as a historic preservation project," said Kate Kearney, president of Docomomo Oregon, in a portion of my interview for CityLab that didn't make it into the article. "They made a case for it. But in reality, they never came out and acknowledged that it could be de-listed."

It's not that the aluminum over-cladding is the only big change being made to the building, nor is it the only one that will substantially change its aesthetics. Simply switching the dark glass for clear glass gives the exterior a different composition. But nobody seems to argue much with that decision because it is so transformative for the interior. As DLR Group's Erica Ceder explained in the CityLab article, “The old glass that we pulled out of the building had a visible light transmittance value of 7 percent,” Ceder said. “The replacement glass is 77 percent.” That and trading drop ceilings for higher exposed concrete structural ceilings (painted white) has made the interior transformation absolutely incredible, as I saw on a recent construction tour.

Rather, it's the over-cladding that seems to be the rub for some preservationists, and understandably so. Other landmark 20th century buildings have had their facades replaced, like the UN Secretariat building by Oscar Niemeyer and Lever House by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, both masterworks. But those were essentially in-kind material replacements, whereas the Portland Building is putting metal over the painted-concrete facade.

"If you cover the character-defining features, how is that historic preservation?”  Kate Kearney, president of the Oregon chapter of Docomomo, argued in the CityLab article. “Personally, I don’t think that holds up."

 

Rendering of the Portland Building renovation (DLR Group)

 

Could they have patched the leaks without the over-cladding? Absolutely. “What the city said was, ‘We want you to give us a warranty for 10 years,’" architect and historic preservation expert Peter Meijer, who wrote the Portland Building's National Register listing in 2011, told me in the 2017 Architect story. "A repair of the existing façade will get you a warranty for three to five years, depending on the sealant, but not a 10-year warranty. The city raised the bar on their expectations to the point where there is only one solution: to completely cover it up with a brand-new skin. But metal panels will really never be able to have the same look as a painted concrete building.”

It was enough to prompt some critics, such as Antonio Pacheco of Archinect, to declare that the building has done more than lose its National Register listing. In Pacheco's words, or at least the headline-writers at Architect, the Portland Building is "no longer historically significant." On Twitter, Pacheco even went so far as to say he wished the building would have been torn down if the original architecture was not preserved. At least then, he argued, it could have served as an inspiring cautionary tale.

But buildings aren't museum pieces. I wonder if Pacheco ever walked the building, seeing its astonishingly dark interiors illuminated by oppressive fluorescent lights, or inspecting all the water damage.

Kristin Wells from the City of Portland got more specific about that patch job in today's CityLab article. "Keeping punched windows in a concrete shell sets us up for leaks again. At the end of the day, you’re still relying on caulking and re-caulking every five to 10 years," she said. "We do not want to be back in this situation again.”

A preservationist could still argue that caulking and re-caulking the Portland Building every five to ten years was not an unreasonable responsibility, and done right, it could stay ahead of the leaks. I mean, some beauties just require more maintenance. I used to own two old BMWs, and the first one in particular was, in my mind, more beautiful than any new car in production in 2019, and by a long shot. But the upkeep on that Bimmer was so expensive that it actually made it costlier to own a 1983 car than to buy a brand-new one. Eventually I had to get a Volkswagen. So has the Portland Building gone from a BMW to a Volkswagen? No. It's a BMW with some new parts that made it no longer authentic to its showroom-floor self. But it's a better ride than ever.

If one goes looking at the Portland Building with an eye for precedents, sure, there's reason to be alarmed. "It’s precedent-setting," Kearney said. "If it’s okay to over-clad a building from this era, then you’re going to perhaps make it okay for others. What if this happened to City Hall next door? Would we be okay if it was clad in metal? The era is not the issue." Of course that's a bit much. It's stretching the argument to an extreme hypothetical example. But it's also an argument rooted in principle, which has to be respected. We need people making these kinds of principled arguments, even if the Portland Building may be an exception.

Speaking of which — this notion of deciding whether or not this renovation is right or wrong — the one thing that frustrates me a little about the audit is the timing. I love that the City of Portland has an independent auditor. That's an effort to bring integrity to what the city is doing. It's very much a good idea to audit the Portland Building process. I even remember at the time being somewhat shocked by the notion of the over-cladding and openly wondering if such drastic action was a good idea when all that really was required to make the old facade work was essentially just some extra pro-active maintenance.

 

Portland Building reconstruction, 6/10/19 (Brian Libby)

 

Yet I decided back then that I would ultimately withhold judgment until I'd walked the completed building and had a chance to live with the renovation a little bit, and talk to the people who work inside. You don't need to wait for that later date to talk about the principle of a landmark building's facade replacement with an altogether different material, because that discussion is not about whether or not the inside of the renovated building is better. Of course it will be better — but at what cost to history? That's the question. Yet even having said all that, I find it odd that the audit is prompting another round of debate about the Portland Building that is neither at the design stage nor at the completion stage. It feels like the mother is in labor and we're in the waiting room arguing about whether to have the kid.

The one decision I do already find myself moving towards, or anticipate having after the building is completed, is that maybe there is no definitive answer. It reminds me of my days as a movie critic back in the late '90s and early '00s. Some movies had clear good guys and bad guys. Some movies ended with closure for the characters — they'd ride off into the sunset after surviving the big plot complication. But other movies came with antiheroes and ambiguous endings. The stars weren't solely virtuous and brave, nor were they demonically evil. They were actual people in evocatively real-life situations, and part of the essence of the story was that you have to accept the ambiguity and lack of closure.

I find the Portland Building as architecture to somehow aspire to be one of those movie heroes: the pure good guy with transcendent power. But it turned out to be the flawed hero in search of a final resolution that may never come.

I think it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that the interior of the new Portland Building blows away the interior of the old Portland Building, and besides, that old interior lacked Graves's fingerprint. "I didn’t do the interiors,” Graves reminded me in 2014 interview for Architect magazine. “I’m blamed for them, because of the [dark] windows. But I didn’t do the interiors of the building.”

These interiors are not just so much more full of light and with bigger, less compressed volumes of space thanks to the removal of the drop ceilings, but they connect the inside of the building to the outside so much more. You're not relying solely on the tiny square windows anymore because the middle portions of the facade wash the whole space with light and give the eye more of a sense of panorama coming from a view across the different windows.

Yet I do suspect that in some ways the be paid will be a slight bit of authenticity lost that one learns to live with, much as the rebuilt old buildings of Germany and Japan that I've visited have felt. Visiting Nuremberg and Berlin and Tokyo, and seeing some "old" cathedral or temple that was essentially rebuilt from rubble and a couple of standing walls after World War II, I knew that they were not as purely old and historic as, say, a cathedral in Britain or elsewhere in Europe or Asia that survived. (In Japan it seemed less of a conundrum because their culture ritualistically rebuilds some of its most sacred architecture.) But it's hard to argue definitively against those cities' desire to rekindle the best of their cultural heritages, and reclaim them from fascist' manipulation and corruption of heritage.

The Portland Building is not some ancient relic, of course. Just the fact that it had such systematic problems a mere 35 years after its completion says something: through the City of Portland's own cheapness, it was inherently flawed from the start. You have to respect the fact that it's not inherently flawed anymore, either in terms of its construction or the user experience. But the ambiguity of its authenticity, or at least the multi-faceted and mult-era nature of that fingerprint, has to be considered an indelible part of the Portland Building story. That's not just true right now, however. In a way, it's always been true. After all, that's really what the architectural language of Graves's design and Postmodernism are about.

As I've said before, maybe it's fitting that the renovation of this Postmodern landmark is itself postmodern. The Portland Building: postmodern Postmodernism.

 

 

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Watching the Rose Parade from Memorial Coliseum, 10 years after it was nearly demolished

Last Saturday's Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade (Brian Libby)

 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If there is a signature song for Veterans Memorial Coliseum, perhaps it ought to be "Louie Louie."

Sure, you could make the case for the Trail Blazers' unofficial theme song, the instrumental one with the horns from the old TV broadcasts. Or you could go for an early Beatles song given that they (with apologies to Hendrix, Dylan and others) are arguably the crowning act to have played Memorial Coliseum.

But given that the history of "Louie Louie" and its origins neatly parallel the beginnings of the Coliseum itself, and that it's the most popular song recording ever to come out of Portland, you wouldn't go amiss choosing this Kingsmen standard. "Louie Louie" was written and first recorded by Richard Perry in 1955, about the same time the Coliseum was being conceived. It was re-recorded by The Kingsmen in 1963, at a studio in downtown Portland, just three years after the Coliseum's completion.

Then again, maybe I'm just feeling sentimental after attending the Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade last Saturday at the Coliseum with my mom, who is an endearingly big fan of marching bands and parades. "Louie Louie," I learned on Saturday, is still the marching-band song that seems to get everyone excited — at least the older crowd assembled here.

Why pay $15 or $30 plus astronomical Ticketmaster fees to see a parade you can see for free on the streets of Portland? For that reason, attendance at the Coliseum for the parade is sparse, maybe a couple thousand, as it has been in past years. But for many, it's a chance to have a guaranteed seat in a specific place that's out of the elements. I mean, it rains on Rose Parade day fairly often.

For me, of course, it was a chance not so much to see the parade as to experience Memorial Coliseum the way it was meant — on virtually the only it's possible.

For 363 or 364 days a year, a black curtain blocks the 360-degree view to the outside that's possible from the Coliseum's more than 10,000 seats. It's a one-of-a-kind architectural experience: a venue larger than a couple of Portland city blocks that's transparent on all four sides, in a way that's visible not just from the concourse but the arena bowl itself. But the Coliseum's operators are reluctant to open and close the curtains given their fragile nature, as a nearly 60-year-old mechanism. So it's only open for the Grand Floral Parade and sometimes a Portland Winterhawks matinee hockey game in January.

What it means to have the curtain open at a daytime event is that Coliseum attendees don't feel disconnected from the outside, like would be the case in practically any other arena ever built. Instead, the sunlight pours in. But it's too much of a wild card to touring acts that have never had to account for so much natural light before, so they keep it closed most of the time.

Interestingly, though, introducing natural light into large-scale arenas like NBA teams play in is an unmistakable architectural trend, as seen in recent arenas like the Sacramento Kings' Golden One Center. But it's still a fraction of the glass and transparency that exists at Memorial Coliseum with its curtain properly open. None of them close to giving you a 360-degree view outside like the Coliseum has. The closest I've ever encountered besides the Coliseum is the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin by the great Mies van der Rohe, completed in 1968 — eight years after the Coliseum. But it's an art museum, not an arena.

And of course there's a larger connection between these two buildings: Myron Goldsmith, the lead architect for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill on the Coliseum, studied under Mies. Goldsmith also designed Oracle Arena, where the Golden State Warriors will play their last game tonight, before moving to a new arena in San Francisco.

What occurred to me in days since last Saturday's parade at the Coliseum was that this was the first ticketed event I've attended since April, which marked the 10th anniversary of the grassroots to save the building from demolition.

 

A recent view of the Coliseum (Brian Libby)

 

Back in 2009, Mayor Sam Adams had introduced a plan to tear down the city-owned Coliseum in order to build a baseball stadium for the lower-minor-league Portland Beavers. The Beavers had played for decades in what's now Providence Park (originally Civic Stadium), but lost their home when it was converted to a soccer-only facility.

There's no doubt that the Providence Park conversion was a good idea, because it accompanied and enabled the Portland Timbers' jump to Major League Soccer, setting the table for the ensuing explosion of citywide Timbers and Thorns fandom. But building a minor league baseball stadium from scratch, in the center of the city? Come on. I mean, think of it this way if you're a baseball fan: had we built that stadium, it would now be arguably hindering the current effort to lure a Major League Baseball franchise and build a correspondingly MLB-caliber stadium.

And besides, from a strictly number standpoint, even after the Trail Blazers departed Memorial Coliseum in 1996 for the Rose Garden arena next door (now the Moda Center), the Coliseum remained busy, with well over 100 events a year. While the Moda Center became the first-choice venue for big touring acts as well as the Blazers' home, the Coliseum was quietly the only local venue in that slightly smaller range: bigger than the downtown theaters and auditoriums yet half the size of the Moda.

Credit Adams for ultimately backing away from the baseball-stadium plan after boisterous community opposition. Even I got involved, participating in the formation of what became known as the Friends of Memorial Coliseum. Adams initially explored a range of ideas through what was called a stakeholder advisory committee overseen by the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland), many of them unrealistic and not viable, if not ridiculous. Water park, anyone? Peace garden?

What they discovered—they being not only Mayor Adams but his successor, Mayor Charlie Hales—was that no conversion of a multi-use arena to a single-use venue would make as much economic sense as simply letting the Coliseum do its thing. Mayor Hales did his part by commissioning a third-party economic study that found the arena would turn a profit with even a modest restoration. In fact, even after a very limited $5 million "refresh" in 2017, the building is already doing just that. If a full-scale restoration happened, something more in the $50-75 million range, the study estimated the Coliseum could generate some $2 billion in economic activity over the next 20 years.

You can't talk about Memorial Coliseum and the Moda Center without discussing what a dead zone the collective Rose Quarter property is, and how desperately it's in need of an urban-design fix. You don't need a master's degree in urban planning to see what the problem is, either. It's a trio of above-ground parking garages, one attached to the Moda Center itself and the other two across the street, blocking the two arenas' connection to Broadway, a streetcar-lined major thoroughfare. Actually, it's four garages, because there's also the One Center Court building between the arenas, which is really just a couple of office floors built onto another parking garage.

 

Last Saturday's Grand Floral Parade (Brian Libby)

 

There could be an urban-design textbook called What Not To Do and this wasteland of parking garages would likely be pictured on the cover.

Thankfully there's the Albina Vision, a community-driven initiative that's also rooted in very good urban design. It proposes a series of changes to the Rose Quarter that would not only make it a wonderful, pedestrian and greenspace-oriented space extending to the riverfront, but would also help restore the Albina neighborhood that unfortunately Memorial Coliseum, along with Emanuel Hospital and Interstate 5, largely demolished. Let's face it: like other midcentury urban renewal projects, Memorial Coliseum should have been built somewhere else, somewhere that didn't trample people's homes with a disturbing penchant for neighborhoods occupied largely by minorities. Yet continuing the cycle of destruction by demolishing a beautiful and useful and oft-used arena doesn't make things better. It makes them worse. That's why a restored Coliseum (or at least the presumption of it) is part of the Albina Vision.

Though it's tempting to stop and celebrate that the Coliseum has lived another decade, it's not really saved until it's truly restored. The economic case is already there and now it's a matter of City Council approving the funds. I've heard increased whispering that some funding could become available in the near future, more so than I've heard about in most of the past ten years. It could be one big funding package or a series of smaller restorations. But this also very well turn out to be a mirage given the lack of leadership City Council has shown over the past decade in fixing the Coliseum, particularly under Mayor Charlie Hales from 2013-17. For what it's worth, a majority of the current City Council members have expressed support for a Coliseum restoration.

It's all part of a larger puzzle emerging at the east end of the Broadway Bridge. There's a relatively new Portland Streetcar line, and streetcars are development tools even more than they are transportation. The Lloyd District is burgeoning into more of a high-density, mixed-use neighborhood just to the east, and just north of the Rose Quarter and the freeway overpasses, North and Northeast Portland are experiencing a wave of development. This under-utilized stretch of Broadway between the river and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, particularly when you add the adjacent Portland Public Schools site likely to be vacated in the years ahead, is so centrally located that it would be ridiculous for it not to become a place of increasingly tall buildings where housing, commercial and retail exist together with greenspace and public buildings like the two arenas. 

As I sat in Row G at the Coliseum on Saturday, though, I wasn't thinking about economic impact or urban planning. I was enjoying amateur trumpet and trombone players and drummers marching straight through the floor of the arena, the only such parade-architectural mashup in the country if not beyond. I was looking at the tops of the trees peeking over the seating bowl and through the glass. Think about it: have you ever looked at trees from an arena before? That transparency and volume and light are what modern architecture is all about. And if it happens to the tune of "Louie Louie," as hand-made, flower-covered floats roll by, it makes for an endearing civic celebration in a glorious place. As a Generation X member, there's some part of me that is a little too cynical for rah-rah boosterism, but I really like the combination of this guileless parade in this heroically aspirational yet still slightly run-down landmark.

May they both be around for a long time.

 

 

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Will Martin on Will Martin

A grid of KOIN interview screen captures (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The Architectural Heritage Center's exhibit "The Artistic and Eclectic Will Martin: Selected Works, 1957-1985" is a wonderful look at an architect and his career, from Martin's signature work, Pioneer Courthouse Square, to a number of other architecture projects and proposals as well as artwork, including a lot of compelling visuals, particularly architectural renderings. But one aspect of the exhibit that most caught my attention because it featured the voice and face of the man.

When Pioneer Courthouse Square was under construction, Martin sat down with KOIN reporter Mike Donahue for an interview right there on the site. He talks about the design competition, the evolution of his team's design, the political fight to get the square built, as well as his upbringing and training as an architect. The talk, playing on a video loop along with some additional audio of Martin talking about the design, lets Martin speak in his own words.

Of course Martin died tragically in 1985, so he never had much of a chance to show what else his firm could do after the square commission. It's too bad, because any number of other major cultural buildings and public spaces might have been on the offing. But it also robbed so many people in the local architecture community of a chance to know Martin as a person. I recommend going to the AHC and watching the video for that reason: it's not just what he says but the chance to see him say it, to pick up on his body language and demeanor. Martin was rather suave, and I think he knew it. It's fun to watch him answer a young Donahue's questions as his magnum opus gets constructed all around them.

One thing I continually find strange is just how few pictures there are of Martin, at least online. Search engines only bring up one photo of him drawing, many years before the square, or perhaps a cheeky promotional flyer saying, "Would you buy a brick from this man?" He definitely was no introvert, but he's a hard face to find, even in the AHC exhibit itself. That flyer is there, and so is a painting of Martin. But next to no other photos. That's part of why the video is so compelling.

For those who can't make it to the exhibit, or need some extra enticement to do so, following is a summary of Martin's comments. If nothing else, skip to the bottom and read the last question and answer, knowing Martin would only live one year beyond Pioneer Courthouse Square's completion.

The AHC video, provided by former partner John Matteson, first features Martin talks specifically about the Pioneer Courthouse Square design (and the move away from a covered conservatory, which Mayor Ivancie and some others preferred):

Martin: "Prior to this quick scheme, there were probably another half a dozen schemes that all had some merit but were not totally acceptable to all of this.

One day, about a week and a half prior to the completion date, the entire team sat in a room and evaluated what we had done to date and decided it was the wrong way to go. The reason was we had far too much structure on the site, and probably the cost would be completely out of line. It was too complex, and what we did have was probably not adequate for a conservatory in terms of scope and size: to make it work in the true sense of a conservatory. So in about 20 minutes I came to the board and scratched this [design] out, retaining the stoa idea that we previously developed with a column system on each street, Yamhill and Morrison, which relayed to the light rail transit systems.

Competition model of Pioneer Courthouse Square (University of Oregon)

We retained that, we retained the amphitheater idea. We also retained the idea of a terraced plaza, because of the grade change from Broadway and Morrison down to the corner at Sixth and Yamhill. So this curved form here was a new idea. The idea of the fallen arch or the tipped arch to create an opening to service the underneath part of the space was also a new idea. What building we were going to develop then took place at this corner, again as a kind of café, aviary, semi-conservatory thing with a tower, an elevator and all that.

Everyone bought the idea from this sketch except for [graphic artist] Bob Reynolds. Bob Reynolds bought it temporarily, and then when he went home he called me a couple hours later. He said, ‘Will, if everyone wants to go ahead with it, that’s fine with me. But would you do me a favor?’ I said, ‘Sure, Bob, I’ve only known you for twenty years and have the highest respect for you. What do you want me to do?’ He said, ‘I want you to redesign it in thirty minutes: to cleanse your mind, simplify it, and see what you come up with.’ So I did just that. I eliminated the elevator tower, the aviary, the café, and what was left of the conservatory, and wound up essentially with the scheme that we submitted. Bob came in and looked at it and said, ‘That’s it. Let’s go.’ So off we went."

And then comes the KOIN interview .

Mike Donahue: You took some criticism that almost killed your plan. I remember reading the headlines in the newspaper: “Pioneer Square Plan Is Dead.” What did that do you personally?

Will Martin: Well, it was the most shocking headline I’ve ever seen. It was a terribly sobering thing after all the hours and months and sweat and blood that we put into the thing. It seemed like a terrible thing to have happen. I think that my first response was to run and scream. But then I sat down with my partners and the people that worked with me on it, and we decided which way we would go with it, and sort of got it back on its feet. Now it’s a reality.

As an architect, though, in a political world you do have to make amends, compromises, to the political concerns.

I think all architecture is a compromise, and I don’t mean that in a negative way at all. There’s no such thing as a perfect building. The site itself can be a compromise. But compromises can be turned into very positive affairs. They can actually add…[unable to discern]. It actually depends on how you define compromise. If it’s a compromise in terms of giving away something of the design that’s really important, then that’s wrong. That’s immoral and it’s unethical. But if it’s a compromise to nature or a compromise to use, or something of that effect, then I can take the idea of compromise as a very positive thing.

Will the Pioneer Square that we see be the one that you wanted to see? Do you feel like it could be better in Will Martin’s eyes?

Well, these things can always be better, I suppose. There’s nothing perfect in what man creates. But I’m extremely happy with the way that it’s turned out. We’ve worked with a number of people from the city, the Portland Development Commission, our own people and so on, and we have not changed the square substantially at all. It’s still essentially the same scheme that we won the competition with. And I feel real good about that.

Pioneer Courthouse Square fundraising flyer (Architectural Heritage Center)

And you should feel good winning a national competition. You’re the local boy. Do you feel that was an advantage or disadvantage being from the Portland area?

I think it was a tremendous advantage. I doubt if I have any more talent than the other contenders. But I live here. I’ve lived here for 20 years. I was able to come up here at 2 o’clock in the morning and see what it was like, what the lighting qualities [are throughout the day]. I was here one night in the cold freezing rain. And the sense of Portland, the sense of what the people are all about: I had an advantage.

It’s a people-oriented square. It’s not a park, I understand. Some people confuse that.

It’s very much a people-oriented square. The difference between park and square, in my opinion—and I think it’s very valid, here—is that a square is an open space where people can engage in a number of different activities. A park is usually what we consider a space that has trees and lots of water and grass and that sort of thing. Portland has an abundance of that. But cities like Sienna and Bologna and the Italian hilltowns have what they call a piazza, a square. It’s a safety valve of use for people. And it tends to be an open, simple kind of space where a variety of activities can take place.

We’re not in Europe. We’re in the Pacific Northwest. Do you feel it will fit here as well?

Well, let me elaborate.

We did get involved with the question: what is an American square?  You think we’re different from Europeans, and I agree: we are. We love to be entertained. Television is a very important American invention, as is radio and so on. Movies are a great source of entertainment. So we’ll have a family room. And I took the cue from there: maybe Portland should have a downtown living room, or a downtown family room. And essentially in architectonic translation, that’s what it is. It’s a place to be entertained. Or if you want to entertain someone you can do that also. Hopefully you’ll be able to come here on almost any day and be entertained in one way or another, just watching people, for example.

Let’s talk about Will Martin the human being. Here you are, a lover of classics, an appreciator of Roman and Greek architecture, yet you were born the Ozarks. Somehow those two don’t seem to jive, at least on the initial look. How did you come from the Ozarks to where you are now?

Actually I look at my childhood background as being a good contributor to what I’m doing now. Life was simple. I dealt with the natural forces. I became a lover of nature.  Living on the farm, my father taught me the joy of hard work, my mother taught me the beauty of poetry and music, and it was probably the best training I’ve had. So in that case, I think it was a great preparation for what I finally decided to do, which was to become an architect. I had a scholarship to travel to Europe when I was a student, in 1955. That had a strong influence on what I did for the rest of my career.

What were some of your favorite things you saw in Europe?

Oh my, they were numerous. You can imagine a kid of 25 years old seeing Rome for the first time, for example.  When I walked into St. Peter’s [Cathedral], I couldn’t believe it. It was so overpowering, and so immense, and so incredibly wonderful. I traveled through England and France, through Italy. I remember the last day, when I was in Paris, before I came home. It was autumn, and there’s no light like the autumn light in Paris. I went down to the cathedral, Notre Dame, for the last time, and stood in front of her like she was some great lady in the beautiful autumn light filtering down from the trees onto the building. I’ll never forget that image as long as I live.

They say that polticians like to be in office when a major edifice is constructed so that their names can appear on the cornerstone. Is there a certain amount of ego satisfaction in your work as well? That this type of thing, a landmark or a structure, would be raised that Will Martin designed?

Well, I think by all means if anyone’s honest at all about these things, I’m sure. We define Albert Schweitzer as one of the greatest giving people that ever existed. I think Albert Schweitzer—not to diminish him—did what he did because it was an ego trip, primarily, and he had to get tremendous gratification out of doing it personally or he wouldn’t have done it. Probably it’s the means and the end that really counts, in this ego trip we all go through. I used to be young and arrogant, or more arrogant: very much caught up in what I was doing and believing that it was probably the best thing that was being done. I’m not so sure of that anymore, and I believe now that if we are not people-oriented, if we don’t design for people, then we’re missing the whole bit. And believe me: the greatest excitement of all is dealing with human problems.

We recently won the interview for the School for the Blind for the State of Oregon. It’s a very exciting and, as you can imagine, a very human-oriented piece of work. I’m just dying to get into it. We did the Holiday Center over on the east side some eight years ago. It was probably the most rewarding project I’ve ever worked on, except possibly Pioneer Square.

Is this your crowing achievement, or will there be more to come? What is Will Martin looking for in the future? What are you going to try do do? Same kind of thing? More Pioneer Squares elsewhere?

Well, most of us really don’t really want to admit it’s our last or our crowing achievement. There’s always the next project to look forward to. There may be more open spaces of this type to design. I think it’s going to be a strong success and may have some influence on future work of this type. The old saw is that you don’t reach your optimum design capability until you’re about my age, which is about 50. I’m not sure if I’ve reached the peak yet or not. I’d like to think that there’s a lot more to come yet.

 

 

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From Grove to Hoxton Hotel: Surround Architecture's Mark VanderZanden and Ennismore's Chris Stringfellow discuss the design

The nine-story addition adjacent to the original Grove (Ennismore International)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's been quite a journey for the Grove Hotel building at NW Fourth and Burnside, or as it's now known, the Hoxton Hotel — part of a chic London-based boutique hotel chain with locations only in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Brooklyn, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Located next to the Chinatown gate, the Grove was completed in 1907 as a residence hotel, one of scores in Old Town at the time. For much of its early history, it was known as the Hotel Philip. Portland's working waterfront, like those in other West Coast cities, offered temporary employment that had workers moving from city to city and job to job as needed; in those days residence hotels weren't flophouses but more like the Residence Inns of their time. As times changed and most such hotels disappeared, the Philip/Grove mostly soldiered on, although for a time there was also a theater in the back toward Couch Street.

The three-story, stucco-clad building is far from its original condition. In 1931, five years after the Burnside Bridge was completed, an ambitious Burnside Street widening project resulted in building fronts up and down the street (from the river to the Park Blocks on the west side) being chopped off in order to add an extra automobile lane.

Before it was purchased and targeted for renovation by the city through the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland) in 2007, in part because the building had become quite deteriorated as well as a place of crime, the Grove had 70 single-room-occupancy units. Initially, a development team of David Gold and John Jay had an agreement to turn the Grove into an approximately 50-room youth hostel, which in some ways might have been more invigorating for the neighborhood than a luxury hotel. (Jay, the former Wieden + Kennedy creative director and now leading the parent company of Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo, has impeccable taste and was highly involved in the hostel's design.) But the deal collapsed, apparently in part over concerns about the Right 2 Dream 2 homeless encampment across the street.

In May 2014, Prosper Portland selected a new team led by Naito Development, which brought on New York-based Eagle Point Hotel Partners and Filament Hospitality. That team proposed pairing the original building with a nine-story tower at Fourth and Couch, which is what happened: a $22 million building project designed by Surround Architecture. But on the eve of their hotel opening in November 2017, the hotel was sold to London-based Ennismore International, parent of the expanding Hoxton Hotel brand, which worked with London firm Fettle on the interiors.

Bedroom and lobby at the Hoxton (Ennismore International)

Visiting the new Hoxton Hotel a few weeks ago, I enjoyed experiencing how the combined new and old spaces fused together (particularly on the ground floor) as well as the smart, comfortable interior design style of the hotel itself, from the wood paneled ground-floor coffee bar to the comfortable, plentiful sofas in its lobby — all of which is to say nothing of the highly anticipated new food and drink establishments there from the likes of Ava Gene's and Tusk chef Joshua McFadden.

To learn more about the project, both in terms of its new-old architectural fusion and its interior design, I talked (separately) with architect Mark VanderZanden of Portland's Surround Architecture and with Chris Stringfellow, a senior designer for Ennismore. In VanderZanden's case, I expanded the conversation to include a little bit about his broader career at Surround, which since its establishment in 2000 has developed an interestingly eclectic portfolio.

Portland Architecture: Mark, could you talk about the Grove Hotel's origins and how you got involved?

Mark VanderZanden: We were hired when Naito during their feasibility study before they fully closed on the property with PDC. I had first started working for Bob Naito on a project on Hood River in about 2005 and completed a few projects together over the years. He told me he liked that I’m a nuts and bolts guy but also creative. Their proposal for the Grove was initially to take that existing building of about 50 rooms and their pro-forma was maybe $5 million at the most.  I gotta tell ya: I walked in that building the first time, and I thought it was going to fall over.

Hotel Philip, 1927 (City of Portland Archives)

Is that when the tower idea came about?

Yes. I was sitting there looking at this thing with my piece of tracing paper and I did a sketch. There was a space behind it, around the corner on Fourth, that used to be a little vaudeville theater and was 50 feet wide by 100 feet deep, this little dog leg. In the Naito proposal they were going to make it back of house. We were up against the limit of occupants we could put in the old building. The thing had been so narrow because it had been chopped in half by the widening of Burnside. The limitations were so great. I did the sketch and said, ‘If you tear down the back side and build a real hotel next to it, you can probably make this work. But otherwise I think I’d punt.’

So the tower both made the original Grove price out by expanding the number of rooms, and it helped stabilize it structurally, right?

Exactly. You could actually use the new building to brace the old one. You could do all the ADA stuff in the new building. You could transfer the FAR [floor area ratio]. You had up to 66,000 square feet. I showed it to Bob and said, ‘This is what you ought to do.’ He said, ‘I don’t think we’d be able to do this,’ and started listing all the difficulties. Looking back, I think this was one of the more successful things we’ve accomplished, the way the sketch came to fruition. It’s in a historic district and the existing building contributes to that.

What about the height? Was that a tough sell?

The consultants told us, ‘You’ll never be able to go 100 feet high.’ Bob’s consultants were pessimistic and negative about it. He came to the conclusion that this was the only chance they had of it penciling out. If not, they were going to punt it back to PDC. So that was the proposal. We met with the Landmarks Commission and I said, ‘I think this is the best opportunity you’ll ever have to save this building.’ Everyone worried about the height. It came down to, ‘Show us a design that will make us feel comfortable with the size.’ So that’s what we did. It was a little bit contentious. There were a couple people on the Landmarks Commission focused on limiting height. But there was enough support that it worked out in the end.

Today (Ennismore International) and rendering of 2014 design (Surround Architecture)

Can you talk about the materials, massing and style? Maybe it’s just the fact that the tower is dark-toned gray and the Grove building is white, but the tower actually seems to be deferential to the much smaller original building. But it’s also quite retro-industrial looking to my eyes. What was your approach?

I find a lot of those industrial buildings, even when they’re brick, to be inherently modern. They’re expressive of structure. To make this blend in: that was the notion. I agree. I believe the only successful approach was to make this more or less a background building, perhaps with a little bit of personality to it. To me a lot of those industrial buildings in the Pearl or Chinatown, or the cusp between the two, are inherently modern. To me it was this interesting opportunity to create something that was vernacular, if you will—I’ll call it playful. It certainly has to work as a hotel. To me it was taking that and applying the circumstances of our program and the site, etc., and developing something that fit.

What about how the new building cantilevers slightly over the Grove building?

The windows on the south side, that big bay that projects out, everybody told us we’d never be able to get approval for cantilevering in Chinatown, which is funny because in Asia, buildings cantilever all over the place. The Landmarks Commission tried to encourage you to provide some sort of Asian themes. I’d argue the cantilever projection was inherently Asian. I don’t know if I ever got anywhere with that one, but that was always my inclination.

Doesn’t that Asian reference continue a bit with some of the ground floor screening?

Definitely. On the ground floor is this mild Asian storefront. You could call it Mondrian or Chinese screen—take your pick. To me it was this wonderful little chance to do something that was blended in yet had personality. 

What about the sale to Ennismore and the transition to a Hoxton Hotel?

That was fascinating. We became sort of a critical go-between. They needed to understand what they were buying. Their goal was to re-design it, re-brand it, to the extent that somebody could come through the front door and recognize it. What they wanted to do was to redo the lobby, which at that point was yet to be built out. The ground floor restaurant space was also yet to be built out. And there was some retail space in the Grove they would probably repurpose. But ultimately that’s really all that changed. They did tweak the rooms a little bit. All that paneling and cabinetry, that was all original to the Grove design. They changed out the furniture in those rooms and the pendant light fixtures, and they changed the carpet. They didn’t really change much else. They left the roof bar and the basement bar intact. And they made some minor changes in the back of house. They brought in their interior designer from England, Fettle, and hired us to implement everything. Otherwise nothing really changed on the exterior.

They actually came to Portland the intent to purchase another building. They didn’t like it when they saw it in person. As they were immersing themselves in Portland, they wandered past the Grove and said, ‘That looks like a Hoxton.’ That’s how they explained it to me. Apparently, some people at Ennismore knew some people who were part of the Naito ownership group.

Tope and La Neta at The Hoxton (Ennismore International)

Chris, could you talk about the Hoxton design philosophy? How is Portland's similar to and different from other Hoxtons?

Stringfellow: We really get the freedom to completely change it up between locations, but you’ll always get that familiar comfortable feeling. We always have a large lobby-cum-bar-cum-restaurant on the ground floor. We collaborated with Fettle Design here in London and with our Hoxton in L.A. We always try to make them a place where locals as well as hotel guests want to hang out. Very residential. You can order drinks or breakfast anywhere. Or you can pop into the restaurant.

The bedrooms, there are of course functional requirements that vary slightly by location. But we like to try and keep a refined residential feel. There will be things like timber finishes or paneling details which we pull for that location. Brooklyn is more industrial with x-shaped concrete ceilings and rough-cut timbers on the floors. Portland, we looked at the Northwest modernism movement. You’ll see rich timber paneling, more midcentury shapes in the future: patterns synonymous to the area seen in things like rugs and kitchens. For artwork, we worked with local gallery Upfor.

I was particularly taken with the lighting: very curvy and sculptural.

Lighting is one of those very important things in projects. We’ve taken care to get the color of the light just right. I think that helps with that residential feeling.

Chandeliers inside the Hoxton lobby (Brian Libby)

Doesn't Hoxton tend to favor renovations of old buildings?

Most of our projects are renovations, but there’s almost always a new build element to each of those. The fusion of old and new can be really powerful. That works especially well in Portland, and in our Paris hotel: these original features juxtaposed against the new. In Portland, the transition between the two is lovely inside. We’ve taken the old part down to the bones. You can see stripped down columns juxtaposed against the new finishes in the new building.

Coming from London to Portland to scout the property, what were some of your initial impressions?

Portland is such a diverse city with so much going on. There are a lot of makers and amazing vintage furniture shops. What also hit us was the smell of pine in the air. We’d never experienced that. I’d probably say it does feel quite spread out. There’s a real mix between residential areas where restaurants and bars seem to be interspersed. Here in London they’re only in specific areas. It encourages you to see more of the city. And the food scene, it’s incredible.

Mark, going back to you once more: how does this project fit into the larger narrative for Surround? The firm has been around for nearly two decades, with an interesting mix of retail, residential, hospitality and more. How did that come about?

VanderZanden: I started the firm in 2000. I’d been a senior designer at Bora Architects and I got the opportunity to work on these branded environments for ESPN. Believe it or not, Bora didn’t want to do them. So I took the opportunity to start a firm.

Most of my other projects for Bora had been out of state. I was the designer for a building at the University of Washington. I worked on the Experience Music Project; Bora was a player on that project doing interior design stuff. I was the designer for the Trail Blazers’ practice facility in Tualatin. I was the lead for all the Niketown projects that Bora was the architect of record on. It was working with Nike’s incredible design staff and translating that into architectural drawings. Prior to Bora I’d spent some time at Miller Hull in Seattle, a great place to learn interesting things about craft. Their design style is very appealing to me as a Northwest guy.

Can you tell me a little more about the branded environments for ESPN? What did that entail?

The first one was one of those trailers that expands in all directions. It’s a fan-experience thing and it goes across the country. I worked with Sandstrom Design to create an architectural experience for fans that was immersing people into the ESPN brand. We also did these other ESPN fan-experience things, kiosks or whatever you want to call them, in a variety of stadiums. We actually developed an ESPN hotel room at one point for Hilton. We worked briefly with the Baltimore developer, Cordish. But ESPN was demanding so much time for their licensing at that time that it never came to be.

I was always fascinated with the idea of communication in architecture and the user experience. My training in school was 180 degrees from that. When I was in school, everybody was opposed to symbolism and narrative and communication. Even now, architecture training is not so much about that. Working with Nike and ESPN in that way was really fascinating. But it also informed how I've looked at other projects.

 

 

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Pioneer Courthouse Square and the legacy of Will Martin: a conversation with Cameron Hyde

Blueprint of Pioneer Courthouse Square, 1980 (Soderstrom Architects)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Two months ago the Architectural Heritage Center opened a new exhibit (on view through July) devoted to the architecture and artistry of Will Martin, who of course is best known as the designer of Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Martin was no ordinary architect. Said by many to be a more talented artist than designer, he was a larger-than-life figure known for his flamboyant clothing (including a fedora and trademark cigar) and gregarious personality. But to win the Pioneer Courthouse Square design competition, Martin's firm, Martin, Soderstrom and Matteson, had to beat out a number of renowned architects and landscape architects, including Peter Eisenman and the great Lawrence Halprin (the latter of whose firm designed the Ira Keller Fountain, which New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable had called "the greatest open space since the Renaissance.") Martin's team, which also included a group of advisors such as landscape architect Doug Macy (of Walker Macy), sculptor Lee Kelly, writer Spencer Gill and artist Robert Reynolds, was the sole local finalist.

Born and raised in the Ozarks of rural Missouri, Martin headed west to attend the University of Oregon, where he earned a degree in 1957. Heading to Portland, he first worked for local firm Wolff & Zimmer (the forerunner of ZGF Architects) before starting his own practice in 1961. In 1966, he established the firm Martin and Soderstrom with David A. Soderstrom. In 1971, the firm became Martin, Soderstrom and Matteson, which dissolved in 1984. In 1985, just a year after Pioneer Courthouse Square's completion Martin and his 25-year-old son Eric died after a plane the elder Martin was piloting crashed into a wall of the Grand Canyon.

The AHC exhibit is a compelling journey through Martin's career as well as his creative mind, including not only the built projects he saw completed, such as the Schneider Museum of Art at Southern Oregon University in Ashland as well as the Organ Grinder restaurant, not to mention some early commercial projects that were distinctly modern in style. What may be most memorable, though, are some of Martin's unbuilt designs, such as a proposal for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC: a spiral walkway that not only shares some similarities with Maya Lin's winning entry, but also prefigures the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Living Memorial in Portland, by Walker Macy.

Notebook self-portrait (Univ. Oregon) and a 1980 TV-interview screen capture (KOIN)

Recently I talked with Portland architect Cameron Hyde, a founding partner at Soderstrom Architects, the firm that emerged from Martin and Soderstrom after Martin's death. Hyde joined Martin's firm in 1978, two years before the Pioneer Courthouse Square design competition.

Portland Architecture: How did you wind up joining Martin and Soderstrom originally?

Cameron Hyde: I graduated from college in 1976, and initially a friend of mine and I built  passive solar houses. But eventually I had to get a job. I worked for a couple local firms, but then I had two friends that worked at Martin, Soderstrom, Matteson, and they suggested I come work there. That was in '78 or '79. At that time, I thought it was a real coup on my part, because this was a firm doing pretty significant buildings: a lot of schools, a lot of university work. They kind of ran their office as three different studios: Will’s work, Dave Soderstrom's work and John Matteson’s work. They didn’t really comingle much. I did several projects with each of those principals. Will entered a few competitions in those days, but the square was the biggest one.

What do you recall about the competition and beating out these better-known candidates?

Even though the submission was anonymous, it was so obvious that this was a Portland firm: the craftsmanship and the materials and the way it was put together. We built a fantastic model in the office basement at 10th and Everett, an old Buddhist temple. We employed a lot of un-architectural techniques. We had the surrounding buildings etched on a printing plate and glued on these exotic hardwoods and had a nice hard wood model of the proposal. It just knocked people’s socks off. It was a beautiful model. It was a work of art.

Weren't the renderings a bit cheeky, too?

Oh yes. He had these fantasy vignettes—cartoons almost—in his renderings. If you look closely in the Pioneer Courthouse Square rendering, he’s got a bank being robbed on the corner. Someone was coming out with the money. A couple was making love in the corner. Life is going on around the square. It’s just some fantastic little stuff. And he always had himself in there. His little black straight-brimmed hat. Or his truck was in there. The model of the square was falling down and breaking on the truck

Three pages from Martin's sketchbook about the square (Soderstrom Architects)

You were the project manager once the project went forward. Could you talk a little bit about working with Martin day in and day out?

Will was a big-picture guy. He really couldn’t design a detail to save his life. He had a naïve sense of materials. Like simple things that I would, as a practical farm boy, know better: not to put terracotta under water, for example. I had to talk Will out of using terracotta in the water features. Will was adamant that he wanted the thing to last 100 years. That was his mantra. He didn’t have the faintest idea how to do that, but he meant that. Every time we butted heads, I had to say, 'Will, I think you wanted this to last 100 years. It’s not going to last 100 years if we do it this way.'"

How would you describe his talents and what he was like as a person?

Will, he was a Renaissance man. He really was. I think he was a far better artist than he was an architect. Not even close. He did botanical color drawings of wild plants and flowers that were amazing. To be brutally honest, his ego got really enormous after the square finished, to the point that after the opening ceremony—I think 1984—I quit the next day. I said, 'That’s it.'" But he also could be a lot of fun: very charismatic, and he really had style. I never once in my entire life saw Will Martin wear a tie. He had a wide-brimmed hat that he wore, and he always had a big cigar in his mouth. He had a black turtleneck and a black velveteen sport coat that he wore.

Architect Cameron Hyde today (Soderstrom Architects)

What about overcoming political opposition to the square, or to the idea of an open public space?

The square had political problems. Even before it was built, Bill Roberts and [Mayor] Frank Ivancie decided they didn’t want to have it built. Part of the business community wanted an enclosed structure where you paid to go into an aviary or a skating rink. Will said, 'No, it needs to be open to everybody.' He was very inclusive. He said, ‘Whomever is downtown needs to be able to walk through there.’ He kept holding up examples of European plazas. I went to Sienna, Italy to see the public square there, where they had the horse races. That was something Will was really taken with: having different things in the square as the seasons change. Different times of year different activities take over. It had to be open enough so the activities could be very flexible. I think it’s successful in that regard.

And fundraising? Selling bricks with people's names seems like a stroke of genius.

When there was a funding gap, they decided they were going to sell name bricks. So we invented a process for imprinting people’s names. The bricks were made in Klamath Falls. We made the slugs in lead for the printing press, and they pressed the names into the bricks before they fired them. They couldn’t kill the project because they had all these people personally invested. They didn’t get a lot of big donations but they got a lot of little ones.

I've always found it interesting that although Pioneer Courthouse Square and the Portland Building were completed within just over a year of each other, the Portland Building's postmodern style is often discussed, but not the similar postmodernism of PCS. How much did your team discuss the square as being postmodern?

Wood competition model of Pioneer Courthouse Square (University of Oregon)

What about the square having a postmodern style? It seemed for him more like sincere neo-historicism than postmodern caricature given his love of classical antiquity.

We talked about it all the time. Will was intrigued by postmodernism. On the heels of Pioneer Courthouse Square, we were talking with PSU about redoing the Stott Center. Will's design actually had arms and legs and feet scattered around: big giant feet and hands scattered around the periphery of the building. I thought, ‘That’s goofy. This is going to be dated in about five minutes.’

Could you talk about how some design aspects have been changed, like the purple tile on the fountain?

Will decided to put this purple tile in the fountain that wasn’t in the design competition entry. He got the idea in the shower: ‘We’re going to change this travertine to this purple tile.’ I said, ‘That’s just fucking ridiculous. It’s going to be hideous.’ You couldn’t talk him out of it. Bill Roberts and Frank Ivancie called it a purple piss pot.  So three years after he was gone, Mark Bevens the project architect and I—the two of us who had sway on the square—we went to the people running the place. They were doing some renovations. We said, ‘Let’s get rid of that stuff.’ We did and it looks fantastic. It was purple checkerboard. It looks so much better now.

The fountain's original tile (George McMath) and today's (D. Coetzee)

I'm no expert, but I actually preferred the purple tile. It seemed more in keeping with the irreverence of the design and that postmodern style. But what about one of my favorite parts of design : the way the curving stairway forms an amphitheater with a ramp moving through it?

He got that idea from Arthur Erickson's Law Courts building in Vancouver, British Columbia, only that one is rectilinear while ours is curved. I used the largest beam compass to do that. Now it’s all done on computer. Everything’s designed off that center of the square.

What about the brick? Aside from the name inscriptions, could you talk about the patterning?

I spent quite a bit of time early on working out the brick patterns. Will wanted the pattern to look like a fine Persian carpet with intricacies that were subtle. We didn’t want to cut any brick. We figured it all out so the only thing we did was cut a brick in half. There are no pieces of brick at all. We spent quite a bit of time designing the field of that pattern. There are some subtleties. It was designed for trucks to drive over it. They’ve held up that way. It didn’t ever settle or crack. The brick’s just worn out. I don’t know where they’re going to find that color. Originally we were trying to blend that brick with the transit mall. The transit mall has since been replaced three or four times.

 

 

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Paddling, paperbacks and dreamers: visiting two historic neighborhood grocery buildings

Longfellow's Books (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Recently, by sheer coincidence, I visited two former neighborhood grocery-store buildings in Southeast Portland, each dating to the early 20th century, and each the longtime compound of a particular kind of Portland dreamer.

For some 20 years now, I'd been walking past Longfellow's Books on Division Street. It's not that I'd never been inside; from time to time I'd browsed its stacks of old books and magazines. But Longfellow's wasn't the kind of place you went to find a new literary release, and from the outside it could seem a little, dare I say it, unwelcoming because all the windows were blocked so you couldn't see inside. There was a good reason for this: light can damage old tomes. But it reminded me of taverns when I was growing up, and how all of them seemed to have no windows, as if sunlight would endanger the night creatures huddled inside. Be it retail or food & drink, I like transparency.

Except one day a few weeks ago, walking past Longfellow's I stopped in my tracks when I noticed something had changed, for the first time in decades. All the clutter and screens were gone from the windows, allowing sunlight to pour into the suddenly mostly-empty store. I could finally see inside. But wait, where were the thousands of books?

Soon afterward I discovered that the longtime owner of Longfellow's, Jon Hagen, had recently passed away, and that the store was closing. Curious to learn more about the building's fate, I soon found myself having an audience with Hagen's son, Nile, who co-ran the store for the past decade.

Entering Longfellow's, I soon learned that Nile hadn't simply exposed the south-facing windows on the Division Street side. He'd also uncovered the original wood floors, and the massive old growth Douglas fir columns and ceiling beams. It turned out that this two-story building, dating to 1926, was a little gem waiting to be uncovered. The other primary wall, known for a delightfully amateurish mural depicting Alice in Wonderland, was actually covering even more windows. Then there was the skylight over the stairway in the apartment upstairs, also long covered, but now again unveiled. He said the renovation he pursued was practical—to learn just what kind of physical structure he had, and what value. "Before I started digging into the building itself, I thought it might not be able to stand," he said. "But it’s in good shape."

Inside Longfellow's mid-renovation and with a few books remaining (Brian Libby)

Yet the renovation also seemed to do something more: to provide a bit of catharsis as Nile mourned his father. "I just love sitting here in the sun," he told me. "To think this glass was here the whole time, it's crazy."

As I wrote in a recent Portland Tribune column about the store, this little building stands alone, a mixed-use structure that's not part of a retail high street. It's a unique triangle-shaped building thanks to the angular streets of the Ladd's Addition neighborhood it borders, erected in 1926 as a grocery store and butcher shop by the Crucciolla family, who, like the Hagens, lived upstairs. The patriarch, Mr. Crucciolla, passed away right there in the building, and Jon Hagen too lived out his final days there. It's as if those who occupy this structure become so part of the building that they become an inseparable part of its story.

As I got talking with Hagen, he made it clear that he intended to sell the building, but also that he was looking for a certain kind of buyer. In particular, he seemed to know that this structure could easily wiped away for the taller building that zoning allows. Its modest size means city-mandated seismic bracing isn't necessary, but only if you don't expand its modest 3,900 square feet. "The investor set doesn't get it," Nile Hagen says. "The magic is in the history."

Back in 1939, Longfellow's was the Crucciollas' grocery store (courtesy Nile Hagen)

Normally, I never write about buildings and properties that are for sale. I don't want my writing to become advertising for the transaction. But in the case of Longfellow's, I'm making an exception because the sale itself is tied to this 92-year-old building's fate.

I wondered why Hagen, a visual artist when he wasn't running his dad's store, had no interest in keeping Longfellow's going. After all, with light newly pouring in, I couldn't help but wonder how he could remake the store, perhaps changing up the selection to move from collectible old volumes toward a curated collection of more recent and classic books. But it turned out the issue wasn't that Nile wasn't the natural-born bookseller his machinist-turned-bibliophile father was, but instead that he'd been turned off by gentrification.

"It’s such an intimate space for me. This is sacred ground. But today Division is a tourist street. I find myself having interactions that I don’t find to be life-affirming. It just hasn’t felt like home. Eight or ten years ago, almost everybody who came in was interested in saying hello. Now it’s about two in ten." That's what his father liked too, and what kept Longfellow's going: the ongoing conversations between owners and regular patrons.

The Hagens outside Longfellow's, yesterday (Nile Hagen) and today (Jonathan House)

The modest but long existence of Longfellow's also says something about the neighborhood and such close-in neighborhoods in Portland: that their fundamental affordability was an attractive force for creative people and those disinclined toward the rat race. Eventually, neighborhoods like this have seen a lot of investment and many new businesses and buildings, which in many ways is great. But it's also meant the end of that affordability. "We were able to lead a bohemian life here because it wasn’t cool," Nile says. "It became cool so it became expensive, and so the cool moved out. It’s all cyclical."

"It’s time to let someone else live their dreams here," he added. "But we’d like to find the right steward for the building." When that does happen, you can expect Nile Hagen to head south. He says the desert is calling him. But I want what Nile wants: for someone to buy this building with a dream of living above the store, in the old merchant tradition. Or failing that, at least let the building remain mixed-use; rent out the residence above and encourage any kind of retail that can't be rendered obsolete by Amazon. Or better yet, defy Amazon with the fact that as easy as an online click and a UPS delivery may be, or a download to your tablet, people still want to browse in bookstores. While most all bookstore chains other than Powell's have disappeared, in larger cities a number of brick-and-mortar bookstores are quietly starting to prosper again.

Meanwhile, last week I also visited another early 20th century former grocery store building, this one dating to 1913 and located on Southeast Lincoln Street near 54th Avenue: what's known as the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum.

I had randomly passed the building a few months ago while reporting for another story, and immediately smiled at the sheer randomness of encountering a museum devoted to small watercraft tucked away in an otherwise purely residential setting. Like Longfellow's, there was no context of other mixed-use storefronts: just this little structure standing by itself on the corner.

The exterior of the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum (Brian Libby)

Finally visiting a few days ago, I marveled at what must have been close to 50 kayaks and canoes inside. And they weren't just any kayaks and canoes. Each was a hand-built replica of a native watercraft, most of them belonging to tribes in cold climates of Alaska, Greenland and Scandinavia. It turns out the founder and proprietor of the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum, Harvey Golden, is something of a self-taught expert on the history of native kayaks and canoes, having authored two books on the subject: Kayaks of Greenland and Kayaks of Alaska.

Talking with Golden, I was surprised that he was no outdoorsman growing up, and hadn't even caught his first fish until a few years ago. Instead, he got interested in arctic kayaks 20 years ago when he happened upon an exhibit of ancient Greenland kayaks at the Hull Maritime Museum in Humberside, England. Soon Golden was traveling to museums around Europe to learn more about these craft. Back at Evergreen College, he incorporated this newfound passion into his studies, getting credit for designing and hand-building replica craft.

And to his credit, Golden has managed to make the construction and study of arctic kayaks and canoes his living. The museum's inventory includes 76 different craft of Siberian, Unangan, and Inuit origin, all of which he built. In some cases, the materials cannot be completely faithful; Golden doesn't want to skin any seals for the waterproof exterior, for example, so he uses a replacement. But looking at them, you'd be hard-pressed to see them as anything but authentic. He also runs the publishing company behind the two books, White House Grocery Press, which occupies another early-20th-century neighborhood grocery store. Recently Golden added on to the Lincoln Street building, adding an apartment in back; while it's visible from certain angles, I don't think it compromises the integrity of the original structure.

Founder Harvey Golden and the museum's interior (Brian Libby)

These little retail buildings are dotted throughout Portland's so-called streetcar neighborhoods: the close-in districts especially on the east side that were built in the late 19th and especially the early 20th century. Zoning wasn't as explicit or extensive then, and many times people would incorporate small storefronts into their homes' properties, either in front or behind. On Hawthorne Boulevard at 42nd Avenue, for instance, not far away from the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum, is a still-existing storefront that used to hold a barber shop operated by the father of longtime "Tonight Show" bandleader Doc Severinsen. They are anachronisms that would never be constructed today.

In many cases, it's a little surprising to see them still there, especially on what are now almost entirely commercial streets like Hawthorne. Yet just as they did for the original owners, they often provide opportunity to various entrepreneurs and nonprofiteers like Jon Hagen and Harvey Golden.

As the city journeys over these decades towards not just a much larger but also a denser place, there are small old houses and commercial buildings all over the city being torn down for structures newer and larger. Given that these little commercial buildings in particular are almost exclusively unreinforced masonry, they are the most vulnerable structures to earthquake, giving developers even more reason to raze them. Yet I keep rooting for buildings like these to remain.

In the case of the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum, Golden actually invested in steel bracing a few years ago, so structurally it is particularly sound. But others are not (at least yet) so lucky. Even so, all the structures I've written about here are close in and are part of neighborhoods getting a lot of investment. With a little luck, maybe the gentrification that threatens them can also be a lifeline. I guess we'll see.

 

 

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A post-Morphosis metamorphosis: West of West and the Wells Fargo Center renovation

Rendering of the upcoming Wells Fargo Center renovation (West of West)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last month, the City of Portland’s Design Commission approved a series of alterations to the Wells Fargo Center, Portland’s tallest building. Dating to 1972 and designed by Charles Luckman, the building—originally known as the First National Bank Tower—has long symbolized both the ambition of midcentury modern commercial architecture in the United States as well as the folly of its fortress-like approach to urbanism.

After the 40-story building was completed, it prompted our city to enact height restrictions. For some, this was a kind of alien spaceship that had landed: out of scale with the rest of the urban fabric and, in its unapologetic International Style heroism, possessing no sense of local architectural vernacular. Yet with the elegance of its marble cladding contrasting dark window frames, and the slender sculptural quality that comes from being a taller skyscraper, there is a kind of austere beauty to the Wells Fargo Center. Whether you love it, hate it, or feel indifferent, it’s a major component in our downtown skyline.

That the Wells Fargo Center and its accompanying five-story data processing center building across the street (connected by a sky bridge) are being renovated to be more pedestrian friendly and full of light is not a surprise. After all, the building was sold last year, and the new operators see the value in modernizing the building to be more welcoming at street level as well as inside.

Though the materials and forms of this building are compelling, it had its critics from the start, especially the nation's top critic of that time, Ada Louise Huxtable of The New York Times. “This tower will be tapered and rail-finned, with an accessory block-square box, in a manner that finally died unmourned in Detroit but that the Southern California sun seems to keep alive," Huxtable wrote of the Wells Fargo Center after visiting Portland. "In style, scale and impact it will be alien corn, in every sense of the word."

“No one has stopped looking at the tops of these buildings long enough to see what is happening on the ground," she continued. "Each one is contributing to the devitalization of the city. Virtually all of them eliminate the life on the street. There is nothing on each square block on which these buildings rise- where there should be window, shops, pedestrian activities- but a corporate entrance and a parking garage."

Some 46 years later, the Wells Fargo Center has aged well in the sense of building as sculpture. But it has continued to need a more human presence at the street level. And the task has been handed to a new Portland firm, West of West. As it turns out, West of West's awarding of the commission is somewhat fitting given the principals' roots. Charles Luckman, the Well Fargo’s designer—who was a famous young business executive who once graced the cover of Time magazine before turning to architecture—was based in Los Angeles. That’s where West of West’s principals began their firm before relocating to Portland two years ago.

Lobby and entry of Wells Fargo Center renovation (West of West)

Architects Clayton Taylor and Jai Kumaran are longtime friends who were students together at multiple universities as well as employees at some of the same firms. Both got their undergraduate architecture degrees from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, then graduate architecture degrees from UCLA, where they were particularly influenced by a class taught by the great Thom Mayne, founder of architecture firm Morphosis and co-founder of Sci-Arc, the Los Angeles architecture school. Both Taylor and Kumaran went on to work for Morphosis after UCLA.

I sought out Taylor and Kumaran first to learn more about their redesign for the Wells Fargo Center, but when I saw they had both been students and employees of Mayne, I got even more interested—not simply because Mayne is famous and talented, but because of the idea of Mayne and Luckman being tangentially tied through this project.

Luckman was a leading voice in an era of big, corporate modernism of the Sixties and Seventies. He designed heroic landmarks like the new Madison Square Garden in New York, the Prudential Center in Boston, CBS Television City, the master plan for Los Angeles International Airport, and Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. Mayne, coming 30 years later, was an even bigger name in the deconstructivist architecture of the Nineties, breaking down those heroic forms into something less symmetrical and more messily complex.

Make no mistake: Thom Mayne has nothing direct to do with the Wells Fargo Center’s renovation, but the mere notion of these two very different architects’ ways of looking at the world could be tied together in one building is at least curious. To me, it’s like having an Andy Warhol disciple weigh in on a Rothko painting.

Yet saying it that way suggests I disapprove of this commission going to West of West, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m glad a small firm with mentorship from great architectural minds is tackling this landmark’s renovation instead of a bigger firm with lots of big-project experience but none of it great.

Following is my conversation with Taylor and Kumaran about Wells Fargo, their careers and their firm.

Principals and firm co-founders Clayton Taylor and Jai Kumaran (West of West)

Portland Architecture: Your firm is designing renovations for two big office towers: the Wells Fargo Center and the PacWest Center. How would you characterize these buildings, especially Wells Fargo?

Clayton Taylor: They were built for a certain era, when the pedestrian in the city was seen as a different kind of contributor. Wells Fargo, it literally has a moat around it. First National wanted to build a fortress. You get a building that was about keeping people out, which was fascinating. And they broke all these zoning laws to build the biggest building. Then there’s the Data Processing Building next door.

Jai Kumaran: I actually like that Data Processing Building quite a bit. It’s a completely privatized building for an extinct technology.

Taylor: It’s five levels tall. The top three stick out to the property line. The others form a stem underneath. There’s no lobby.

So how do you humanize them? I see you’ve altered the canopy for the tower, changed its lower-level glass from shaded to clear, and made some more extensive changes to the DPB.

Taylor: You’re inserting something that goes against the original premise, but it needs to happen to keep the buildings alive. Our interventions were surgical: to fit in and make it work, but reposition the building as much as we can.

Kumaran: In the tower, the work is primarily on the interior. But on the data processing center building, that’s our biggest exterior intervention. We ended up asking, ‘What’s a way to create some enclosure without heavily modifying the building, and without cutting the building off from the street?’ So we’re wrapping the lower level in glass.

Taylor: We took the mullion pattern on the tower and dragged it straight down. It gives the whole building a front door now. It becomes a whole frontage along Fourth with this grand stair that leads up into the building. A big set of stairs welcomes people in, so there’s a public lobby to approach the building. I think that’s how we won the project. We’re kind of reworking that lower bit to make it functional. Now it has this great contrast between contemporary office culture and this gorgeous midcentury building. The hope is there’s life around it.

Could you talk a little bit about the journey you two have gone on that led to forming the firm?

Taylor: When we started West of West, we were working in L.A. kind of more from our kitchen tables. When we moved here to Portland, it’s when we actually opened an office. But we had gone to undergrad together at Cal Poly, and we lived in Copenhagen together.

Kumaran: That experience in Europe was a very formative. From there we both went to UCLA for grad school. We were in the super studio led by Thom Mayne. A lot of people thought they’d go to grad school with Thom and do shiny buildings. This was the opposite. In this program we produced a book called The Culture Now Project that really influenced our thinking about our own firm. The book is about how art and culture can influence and spark change within midsized cities in the US. Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco: they always have people looking at those cities. What about all the other cities? In the last 10 years, that attention has started to shift.

Renderings of PacWest Center renovation (West of West)

Taylor: It shifted our thinking a bit in terms of where we wanted to work.

Kumaran: It was really about locating a problem first, and then starting to talk about where to go from there. For us it was fascinating.

So working on the book got you thinking about cities where you could do interesting work, and make an impact?

Kumaran: Exactly. In LA we felt like we could be successful but we’d also be following a series of people we knew and tracing those footsteps. I felt like we felt we needed to strike out on our own and search for something else.

Taylor: ‘We said, ‘Where else would we want to go?’

But you still wound up staying in Los Angeles, at least for a time, because you both went from Mayne’s UCLA graduate class to working for his firm, Morphosis.

Kumaran: Yes, we did for a while. After the book, we shifted into a million square foot master plan in Chengdu in China. Thom is like, 'We’ve got this million-square-foot project in Chengdu. You can figure this out’. It was like, ‘Let’s design this whole city.’

How would you describe Mayne as a boss, as a teacher, or as an architect?

Kumaran: I think he’s a very intuitive person. He’s a generation after Frank Gehry, but he was still embedded in that Venice ’70s art world. He’d print lithographs for artists. He didn’t produce significant buildings until the '90s. He was embedded in how you represent architecture. But that has now transferred into other things. Ultimately he’s a very intuitive architect on one hand. Thom is also a series of contradictions, I would say. On the other hand he’s all about systems and process.

Taylor: For Thom, a building is artistic, but when you’re talking about it, it’s a machine, a mechanism. It’s putting very specific pieces of the puzzle together. There is artistic pursuit going on, but also an incredible technical pursuit. It inspired us. We may do something sculptural, but it has a formal quality. Thom is rolling all these contradictions into what he is. It’s not a simple sketch. It’s a very worked thing. And the rigor is very strong. Thom is known as a formal architect, but to him, it’s super systematic: this is the only way it can go together. It changes your pursuit of architecture a little bit. Thom creates a whole language of things that produces an architectural outcome. It’s not a Gehry expression. There’s a series of things you’re looking at: line, plane volume. I think he kind of helped me create this system that gives birth to a project.

Kumaran: The reason for the systems was to have multiple systems, and then to overlay and overlap those systems. The result is something more complex than anyone could just design linearly from point A to point B. for Thom I think that’s a deep urban response. It’s a series of systems that have been built up and overlaid. They may not come from the same time or the same person, but it creates this rich and complex final product.

Rendering of the Wells Fargo Center (Dan Haneckow)

A lot of architects might have been content to stay at a firm like Morphosis. What inspired you to set out on your own?

Kumaran: We would always have a drink and talk about ideas, even when Clay left for Rios Clemente Hall. For two or three years while we were working, first together and then separately, there was this discussion happening. I think that ultimately congealed and jelled into us saying, ‘You know what? We can take that next step.’

Taylor: Friends would say, ‘Design this thing for me.’ A friend came through and wanted us to design this tiny interior project for an eyeglass store. We showed them a sketch, and it was like, ‘We start next week.’ Meanwhile the giant urban projects are taking years and years.

Kumaran: At the time I was still at Morphosis, and working on the US embassy in Beirut. At that point it was 10 to 12 years out from completion. There was this radical shift in scale between working on something 1000 square feet for our friends and a million square feet for these firms. That became a foundational idea of our firm, and it still plays out today, going between projects like the Wells Fargo Center and the PacWest versus some of our smaller projects.

Can you tell me about the firm’s name? Why not call it Taylor & Kumaran, or Kumaran & Taylor, like many would?

Taylor: At first, we were working under that kind of very general name as a practice. We said, 'We really need to think about this.' There were a lot of discussions of what to name our practice, and at this point we had five years of work together. We were really into the idea of the west coast and how it was seen as this strange place on the horizon for the longest time. We found these great Teddy Roosevelt quotes from his time in California, saying, ‘I’m west of the west.’ There are even some old maps out there that depict California as an island.

Kumaran: For us, West of West represents an idea. It’s something that can never be reached or achieved.

Taylor: We liked that infinite search for something. It’s not about the end game. It’s always trying to find something. We consider all that we do an experiment.

Hacienda competition entry (West of West)

Looking through West of West’s portfolio, I enjoyed some of the firm’s competition entries, like the Desert Hotel and the ODOT Blocks. Can you talk a little bit about those?

Kumaran: the Desert Hotel is outside of the Joshua Tree. We don’t typically do competitions, but one of our long-term fascinations is the whole land art movement. This proposal was taking a piece of Americana, the roadside motel, and cues from land art, mixing those and embedding our own sensibilities to produce something different. It’s at once recognizable and strange.

Taylor: With ODOT on the east side there’s a great industrial heritage. How do you not copy it but play in that world a little bit? We took the loading dock typology and tried to mess with it. We split them down the middle. There would be a wood shop in one, a brewery in another. That central spine is big enough for a truck to drive through. At night it can become a public space, a place to gather for things like the Portland Night Market or the Portland Winter Light Festival.

ODOT Blocks competition entry (West of West)

Having participated in the ODOT selection process through Prosper Portland, what do you make of how the city hands out commissions like these?

Taylor: In Copenhagen, where Jai and I spent some time living early in our careers, all the architects have to build models for a competition like this and the public comes to see them. The public can really give feedback. It would be nice to see Prosper Portland dive into that. People love design here. There’s such a robust design community. In L.A. everyone’s too busy to go or care. Here there are good architects and people who care about space.

Most of the firms in Portland I admire most share an ability to retain the essence of a project all the way through construction. What’s your process like? How do you get there?

Kumaran: It starts with discussions. We try to involve everyone on our team. What are the ideas we can embed in the project that are going to be durable to last? What can survive the process and all the people who have to weigh in, from ownership to contactors to the city to the general public? You’re right: as long as we can clarify an idea and see it all the way through, we’ll see it as a success.

 

 

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A gem hiding in plain sight: visiting ZGF's Expensify headquarters

Expensify atrium and 'treehouses' (Garrett Rowland)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Dear readers, I feel like I owe you an apology.

Here I am, passing myself off for the past 18 years or so as someone who knows and has experienced the best of Portland's architecture. And yet I have to make a confession: last week I entered a downtown Portland building I had never been inside, and it wowed me enough to ask myself, "Why I haven't I been here until now?"

Portland is a small city, and I would have thought I'd visited all the architectural gems in the downtown core. But the First National Bank building at SW Fifth Avenue and Harvey Milk Street (formerly Stark) was waiting for me all these years. It took ZGF's remodeling and re-imagination of this 1916 building, first designed by Boston firm Coolidge and Shattuck, to get me inside. It's now known as Expensify, and it's not simply a faithful restoration of a wonderful work of Beaux Arts architecture. The design inserts contemporary spaces into the Beaux Arts shell, making Expensify in many respects a hybrid of new and old. But it's a limited hybrid, because except for a pair of floating conference rooms in the back of the building, and a few surface material changes, the architects largely let the original First National Bank building (which was also formerly known as the Oregon Pioneer Savings building, and more recently was a Bank of the West) continue on as its resplendent self.

One of the reasons that I've paid relatively little attention to this building is it stands within a block or two of some other early 20th century bank buildings that also possess a kind of heroic classicism: the US National Bank building from 1917 at Broadway and Stark and the Bank of California building from 1925, both of which were designed by the top local architect of the early 20th century: AE Doyle. But that ought not to have been an excuse, because while the First National Bank wasn't designed by Doyle, Coolidge and Shattuck had just as much pedigree if not more. The firm was first founded by the iconic 19th century architect Henry Hobson Richardson, part of the so-called holy trinity of American architecture along with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Richardson died in 1886, so Shattuck and Coolidge was its successor, but still was responsible for landmarks like the Art Institute of Chicago, the original quad and buildings at Stanford University, and a host of train stations around the country.

The other reason I've probably stayed away from First National until a few days ago is that perhaps even more than most such Beaux Arts bank buildings, this one seems to say, "Keep out." From the street, it's very hard to see inside, so the building's Greek ionic columns and white marble cladding seem to almost act as the fencing for a fortress.

Expensify exterior (Brian Libby)

However, a few seconds after entering what's now called the Expensify headquarters, the expletives started to pour from my mouth like a drunken sailor in a perfect storm.

The four-story building's signature feature is a three-story atrium that begins on the second floor. It was a little strange to enter the building and first come to a dark ground floor with relatively low ceilings that was empty and has not been renovated at all. It's being saved for a later phase of Exensify's renovation when this quickly growing app company needs more space. But those ground-floor spaces are to the left and right as you enter, and a new wide, steel and oak-clad stairway is there to extend an invitation upstairs, into the atrium.

To be honest, I had no idea such a big atrium was inside this building. And it's not just that it's a three-story volume. The entire roof is a skylight, calling to mind a Victorian railway station. The offices wrap this atrium, with only glass and more huge Greek columns separating them so sunlight pours in from above and from the north and (to a lesser extent) the east. So often with renovating old buildings and houses with such architectural pedigree the question becomes how to introduce more natural light. That's not a problem at Expensify.  Even the front facade, despite not being one you can see through well from the street, drinks in light thanks to 18-foot-tall windows on the second floor screened by X-patterned bronze grilles. Inside, the patterned grilles create beautiful geometric shadow patterns.

Expensify looking from front to back and back to front (Brian Libby)

There are two major contemporary additions to the First National Bank's original architecture. One of them, a catwalk-like bridge across the third floor, was added decades ago. ZGF's intervention was to add two metal-clad, glass-faced contemporary boxes that function as small, quiet meeting spaces and connect to multiple floors with stairways tucked behind them. Nicknamed treehouses, the boxes are cantilevered from the back wall, with usable space (including even a swing) underneath. It makes for a striking juxtaposition to see these boxes amidst the three-story Beaux Arts volume, but each one makes you appreciate the other. In particular, I enjoyed how being in these boxes or the stairways just behind them allows you to get an up-close view of some of the old building's details, such as a brass-plated clock along the upper back wall or the curvy ornamentation at the top of an ionic column.

If you work in a three or four-story space shaped like a square donut, I'm sure being able to take a shortcut across the donut hole saves a lot of steps. But it's a little unfortunate that the first bridge couldn't have been removed when ZGF's contemporary boxes and stairs were added. The latter renders the former somewhat obsolete.

Yet it would be a mistake to suggest that this project is anything but a winner. As a recent Architectural Record feature made note, throughout there is a "thoughtful rigor" to how new and old intersect, and a remarkable attention to detail.

Views of Exensify's glorious columns (Brian Libby)

"For example, patterns of oak leaves and acorns on the historic bank vault doors led to the selection of oak for flooring and millwork," James Gauer writes. "The boardroom paneling pattern and the gabled pavilion tops refer to the classical X motifs in balustrades and grilles. The juxtaposition of gold leaf and dark bronze inspired a metalwork palette of brass and blackened steel. And vertical window proportions informed the glazing of the 'treehouse' conference rooms. All of this was executed with a high level of craft."

What's also interesting about Expensify is the approach to office design. In essence, this project extends the open-office concept to its natural conclusion. Whereas most open offices shink down the size of workstations to gain additional communal space, removing cubicles and discouraging personalization of any one little desk, Expensify eliminates the desk altogether.

Working here seems like working in the library of a prestigious East Coast college. Employees sit at a long communal table where laptops are okay but no desktop computers with large monitors. I was told by on ZGF'er on my tour that Expensify's CEO wants to encourage face-to-face ineraction and discourage people from looking at big screens all day. There are a variety of places where one can go to work with a laptop: not just the big communal tables but assorted couches and club chairs, a cafe, and a series of enclosed pods on the third floor that are almost like little Monopoly houses carved out of wood. But there is no group of desks to be found anywhere.

Expensify's alternatives to the workstation (Garrett Rowland)

When I explained this to my partner, who works in the corporate world, her first question was, "You mean they won't allow any dual monitors? I couldn't work like that." I have never used dual monitors, but it's a reasonable point. Still, I do like the principle Expensify is pursuing. There has been a lot of push-back in recent years against open-plan offices, but I suspect that pushback is partly about transitioning from sizable cubicles to small impersonal desks.

It sounds almost counter-intuitive, but could the elimination of desks altogether change that conversation? In a way, it could make people frustrated with their shrinking desks even more frustrated with not having a desk at all. Yet on the other hand, perhaps it could make the desk conversation obsolete and transition more fully the idea of what an office is.

About five days after visiting the project, I find myself wondering: what other great architectural spaces in Portland have I missed? I mean, surely there are any number of great houses I haven't been to. But Expensify is a reminder that even after nearly two decades, I can still stumble upon something unseen and sublime. A job like mine, writing about and commenting on architecture, always implies a certain expertise. Yet today I'm reminded of something an Oregonian editor once said to me: that our job is to learn in public. Somehow I both do and don't hope there are more undiscovered First National Banks out there, because it would mean I'm really not on top of things like I thought I was, but that there are still opportunities to be surprised and delighted.

 

 

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Brian Ferriso and Tim Eddy discuss the Portland Art Museum’s updated Rothko Pavilion design

 
A refined Rothko Pavilion design (Vinci Hamp Architects & Hennebery Eddy Architects) 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last month, as part of a presentation to the City of Portland’s Historic Landmarks Commission, the Portland Art Museum unveiled a revised design for its Rothko Pavilion, the glass-enclosed space that will connect the museum's original 1932 Belluschi Building with the circa-1925 Mark Building to the south.

The design seems to solve what had been a conundrum and a controversy. When the Rothko Pavilion renderings were first unveiled in 2016, members of the public had expressed opposition to how it would take the place of a public right-of-way. The museum sits on a super-block, and  last year a City Council vote granted the right to enclose the public right of way.

Yet in this revised design, created by Chicago firm Vinci Hamp in partnership with Portland firm Hennebery Eddy Architects (the latter of which joined the project earlier this year), there is a passageway for cyclists that dips underneath the Rothko Pavilion, while a half-stairway inside allows museum-goers to still pass from one building to the other without venturing back outside or underground.

The new design also eliminates what was my least favorite part of Vinci Hamp’s first version: a glass-enclosed stair tower that seemed to obstruct the original structure. It helps make the Rothko Pavilion more of a deferential architecture: a connector between the buildings more than a building design itself that competes with the other two.

That was very much intended, and I think it speaks to Hennebery Eddy’s joining the project. Vinci Hamp’s talent as it relates to this project lies largely with museum/gallery interiors and historic renovations. Hennebery Eddy, on the other hand, has, in addition to a lot of design awards, at least two principals (Tim Eddy and David Wark) who served long terms as members of the City of Portland’s Design Commission and can help guide the design through both that body and the Landmarks Commission in order to gain approval and get built.

Looking at these latest renderings from Hennebery Eddy compared to images of the 2016 design, it's a little tricky comparing them apples to apples because the earlier renderings themselves were a bit more extensive graphically (see below). But the pavilion does seem to get cleaner in its appearance, simpler, even though it may actually gain in square footage.

Back then, it was a surprise that the commission wasn't going to Allied Works or even a firm that does many stand-alone buildings. But the Vinci Hamp partnership with Hennebery Eddy, judging by these renderings, could be promising, because there seems to be a greater clarity of idea here: that the Rothko Pavilion needs to be a connector between two buildings—an architecture that is deferential—and thus should all the more present itself as something aesthetically simple.

If you think of Vinci Hamp as an expert designer of spatial connections working here rather than designer of a building between the Belluschi and the Mark Buildings, it makes more sense, especially with their local partner's complimentary skills and insights about how architecture meets its urban context.

I'm still hesitant to pass judgment one way or the other based on a couple simple renderings, but for me this design seems to be worth getting behind. Now that the design has created an outdoor passageway, we can focus on the Rothko Pavilion for how it will improve the museum-going experience, which is quite a lot. And while this glass connector needs to disappear, in a certain sense, as it relates to the Belluschi and Mark buildings, it also has the opportunity to be a very special and uncommon type of space in our city that I wish we had more of: a glass-ensconced winter garden, where the sun is shining through on all sides and there's enough natural light to make the indoors feel like the outdoors—minus the rain.

Recently I sat down with Portland Art Museum director Brian Ferriso and Hennebery Eddy co-founder Tim Eddy to discuss the revised design.

Portland Architecture: Tim, you’re obviously experienced as both a longtime firm leader and as a Design Commission member. Can you talk about being brought onto the project to help negotiate the process of getting past the Landmarks Commission and to refine how the Rothko Pavilion design responds to its context?

Tim Eddy: It’s very, very involved. The challenge with that process [the Historic Landmarks Commission] is a range of commissioners having been on the commission for years; it’s easy to see how they bring thoughts into that process and lots of thoughts, lots of ideas, lots of critique. Quite honestly the design guidelines are very broad: incorporate Portland themes, things like that. They can be used either as an acknowledgement that someone thinks you’re headed the right way, or they can be used as a bludgeon. They’re so flexible in terms of how they’re written that they can be used either way. It’s not an empirical process by any stretch. The most important thing is the design team really leads the charge and has the courage of their convictions in terms of the solution. You come away from that and you get forty gallons worth of information, of which you have to sort out the three or four quarts of it that are actually important to moving forward. That said, I think the DAR [Design Advice Review] process is indispensible. It enables a project, while it’s being developed, to be socialized with the Commission, so that they begin to understand that complexity.

And could you talk a little bit about that complexity—about the design challenge?

Eddy: It is a hugely complex project. It’s a Portland super-block from an urban design standpoint. It’s a museum project, but it’s a public space project. One can’t be successful if the other’s not. The public space is the outward face of the project and the outward face of the museum, if you will. That public space has to be successful and it’s quite challenging. Working the passageway through the project, there’s a challenging amount of grade on the site making that work and making entries work, making them appropriately grand. Respecting two historic landmarks held in high regard across the city for people who are architects and people who aren’t. And it’s got all the mechanics of running two buildings and delivering art to two buildings that don’t have back doors, and trying to improve the pedestrian environment, the urban condition around the buildings, when they are largely opaque.

  The Rothko from 10th Avenue (Vinci Hamp Architects & Hennebery Eddy Architects) 

So a lot of what you’re looking at and really having to get right is the public face and how the inside relates to the outside, right?

Eddy: They’re urban museums, and urban museums kind of tend to be bunkers. The pavilion has a lot of work to do in becoming this transparent front door to both of these facilities. Vinci Hamp knows the museum end of this thing very well. They have a deep understanding of the circulation within the museum and have developed a very strong concept to connect everything together.

Right. It seems like that’s been more or less figured out, and now the challenge is how the design meets the outside world. To that end, it seems like the revised design gives the community a gift with the pass-through space that’s been created. The museum won through City Council vote the right to enclose the public right of way, but then the design team created a version with open passage after all. I wonder if this is not just a gift to the community but an opportunity for the museum: to embrace the fact that people want to cross thresholds.

Eddy: You’d think it would be perceived this way, and I think in some ways it was. But I think Brian could talk about the limitations of having that enclosed ground floor space be where bikes and dogs are passing though.

Ferriso: At the first DAR hearing, someone made a thoughtful comment: “Let’s look at this as a way to reach out further into the fabric of the neighborhood. How can those spaces have tentacles and affect the larger landscape?” That resonated with me. We designed sort of a fortress and a cage [with the sculpture court that was part of the last renovation]. I think that was done because of the sense of security and safety in our downtown. That comment about the fabric of the neighborhood combined with this desire to create this welcoming invitation versus a gate is what is important. We started with the idea that the pavilion being glass helps it to be the invitation. The next phase is to shape not only the pavilion but also the spaces around the pavilion. I’m excited about the Green Loop conversation that needs to take place. [The Green Loop runs along the Park Blocks that face the museum.] Commissioner Nick Fish is talking about how the parks can be embraced by the museum’s campus. Those are all special opportunities. I think the future of an art museum is not only the collection but the programmatic element. We’ve diversified our programmatic elements, but in many ways the facility has been left in the dust. I think we’re trying to bring the envelope up to the level of programming happening. The commons is really part of that.

The 2016 version of the Rothko Pavilion design (Vinci Hamp Architects)

It seems like the Rothko Pavilion has a chance to be a true winter garden: a type of architectural space I wish Portland had more of given our gray climate.

Eddy: If you did a survey of downtown Portland, you’d find very few spaces of the character of the community commons where people can gather in any building. There are auditoriums, there are halls, but very few spaces that are specifically for people to gather in. It’s a little unusual because in major cities usually you find spaces like that.

And the fact that people can walk through the Rothko Pavilion without a ticket, in addition to cyclists using the passageway underneath, seems like a special opportunity.

Eddy: It’s I think an enormous opportunity: to expose community to the museum on a daily basis—to see art, to see pieces of the rotating collection in the Mark Building, to actually move through the sculpture court. There’s always a potential liability where you create an enclosed covered space that’s open to the public in Portland, and the art and architecture really have to solve that problem along with good day-to-day management practices. The transparency and visibility will make it work.

Ferriso: The pulse of the city is pedestrians and cyclists and that flow through the building and within and around the building.

One proposed solution for the right-of-way question was to build only a bridge between the upper floors of the two existing buildings, but you resisted that, right?

Ferriso: that’s the Minneapolis solution. I really dislike that. It takes people out of the streets.

I noticed the stair tower in front seems to be gone, and that seems like an improvement to the design because the stair tower was a little too obtrusive in how it related to the original Belluschi building.

Eddy: It’s gone. There was a feeling that it blocked the view of features of the Belluschi wing of the museum, and that it was out of scale with the pavilion and the existing buildings. We were able to reconfigure that stair. We still have a grand stair in that corner, but it shifts over as it goes over to the fourth floor to access the gallery there.

It reminds me of what Yoshio Taniguchi, as the story goes, told MoMa about his renovation design. “If you raise a lot of money, I will give you great, great architecture. But if you raise really a lot of money, I will make the architecture disappear,”

Tim: that’s a really good comment, and relevant here.

The design has to deal with a series of incongruent grades between floors and between the street and the museums. How do you make that all align, and how do you make things accessible as possible?

Ferriso: We’re working with the disabled community and embracing universal design ideas. It’s something I hadn’t necessarily thought about. If this museum can achieve that level of accessibly...that can be a special experiment.

Eddy: Universal access goes beyond barrier-free design from the perspective that we’re looking at elements of the design and mobility in terms of how they’re perceived. A barrier-free building can still have funny lifts and things. We’re endeavoring to integrate access for everyone into every part of the museum. It’s a big challenge. It’s a 54-inch challenge on the east side of the building. We’re 54 inches form the sidewalk on Park Avenue to the main level of the concourse. It’s particularly challenging with historic buildings. For what I’m sure are good reasons at the time, the floor levels in the old art school portion don’t align with the floor levels in the Belluschi wing. And those don’t align with anything in the Mark building. They were trying to get that lower floor in. All the light wells on the north side of the building, they were trying to squeeze extra programming in. At the time, there was no requirement for access. The idea that it’s a few stairs away is fine. In today’s terms, that few stairs translates into a whole lot of infrastructure. It’s a challenge, but one really worth taking on. There’s a lot of personal dignity tied up in access. There’s emotion to it, and frustration.

This building will be clad pretty much entirely in glass. Can you talk about the type of glass we’re seeing and what the intent or design needs were?

Eddy: We called it bypass glazing. It’s very clean, very slick on the outside, as transparent as possible, very minimal. The curtain wall stands outside the structure of the building.

Ferriso: And you can put the shades between the layers of glass. The Jacqua Center [at the University of Oregon, in Eugene] was always an inspiration for this project.

What about the fact that the Rothko Pavilion will also serve as a new front door for the museum, taking that role from the Belluschi Building? How do you make the Rothko Pavilion distinctive as a new front door, but also get right the relationship between this and the other two buildings? Can you be distinctive and deferential at the same time?

Ferriso: One of the commissioners wanted to see an expressive, iconic building. Tim said, ‘The last thing we want is a three row-house type experience, where there are separate architectural elements.’ I think that’s true.

Eddy: We’re designing an entry to two historic buildings. We don’t see it as designing a third expressive building. We’re designing something that will moderate.

Ferriso: It’s referential, refined elegance. I mentioned the Byler foundation. You feel the architecture melting away, and through scale and proportion and light the art really shines. Having lived in the building 12 years, I’ve come to really admire and appreciate Belluschi. In many ways this is a way to honor that and not distract from it. When we have art installation experiences, those Belluschi galleries really shine. The Diebekorn show, the ceiling treatment, the scale, and these 1930s cars are perfectly nestled in those spaces. In many ways this is a continuation of that aesthetic and that elegance.

Can you talk about the fundraising challenge that lies ahead?

Ferriso: It will be interesting how this unfolds. Certainly costs are different: significant escalation. It will be a very interesting challenge for our community. This is a very special treatment for a cultural gem and a cultural anchor for our city and our state. Will the investors and benefactors come? I don’t see value-engineering this. It’s a very strong, thoughtful, smart and beautiful response and proposal, and that’s what our city needs.

 

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Late mid-century modern, new century: the Portland Plaza after its 10-year, $10 million renovation

Portland Plaza (Wikiwand)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Fritz Junker is a persistent guy. A longtime condo owner at the Portland Plaza building downtown, he has been toiling on and off for a decade now to see the place renovated: to get scores of his fellow condo owners, many of them elderly, to agree to a series of moves that were costly on a per-person basis, but in return have the building looking better than it has since it was completed in 1973. The building is now ready for its 45th anniversary close-up.

It began with a series of facade repairs, but ultimately blossomed into a more extensive and full-scale renovation of the building's lobby and public spaces inside and out, including a large surrounding plaza for which the building is named. Opsis Architecture, interiors firm Staicoff Design Company and landscape design firm Lango Hansen all collaborated on the inside-out restoration.

"This building has such a strong voice," Opsis's Jim Kalvelage told me as we began a recent tour. "You just want to listen to it."

The Portland Plaza was designed by Los Angeles firm DMJM, which as of the late 1960s onward was co-led by by César Pelli; he obviously has become famous for a host of buildings around the world while leading a firm of his own, such as the World Financial Center in New York, the Petronas Towers in Malaysia (tallest in the world from 1998-2004) and the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco. DMJM itself was later, in 1984, folded into the gigantic international firm AECOM. In the late '60s, DMJM pioneered the glass membrane facade design system. "By reversing the mullions (vertical elements that separate windows) inward rather than outward, the system enabled completely new ways of 'wrapping' buildings in glass, creating smooth curtain walls," explains a brief history of DMJM from the Los Angeles Conservancy. The firm, the Conservancy argues, "literally changed the face of corporate architecture in the late twentieth century." Their noteworthy mid-century projects in L.A., ranging from buildings to landscape design to transportation, included the American Cement Building and MacArthur Park.

The building is both distinctive and prominent. It was the first residential building in downtown Portland to occupy a full city block. Like the Standard Plaza down the street, which was the first office building on a full block, the added space gives the building room to breathe in relation to its neighbors and it offers a generous amount of ground floor outdoor space. In the Portland Plaza's case, you can't stare at Lawrence Halprin's magnificent Keller Fountain (which New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable once called the best public space since the Renaissance) without seeing the building towering above it with the help of not just its own 25 stories but a sloping topography.

The Portland Plaza on the skyline (Brian Libby) and seen from above (Google Maps)

The Portland Plaza is often referred to by a nickname, the Norelco building, because of its shape, which is like the electric shaver of the same name: three circles forming a triangle. Rather than the Norelco building one could also note its resemblance (when seen from directly above, at least) to a flower. Regardless of what you call it, the building's form is part of the time from whence it came.

The early 1970s historically in architecture would probably be associated more with concrete and Brutalism than with glass curtain walls. In this way, the Plaza could be more associated with the more glass and steel-oriented modern architecture of the '60s. The aforementioned Standard Plaza and Veterans Memorial Coliseum—dating to 1963 and 1960, respectively, and both designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill—are two local examples. Yet there is something to the curvy form of the DMJM design for the Portland Plaza that, at least to my eyes, is the tip-off that it's actually from the '70s.

As I visited the project with Junker and Opsis's Jim Kalvelage, we first stopped to see a new glass entry awning that curves outward in a shape similar to the building. The old canopy was actually not original to the design but added five years later, in 1978, after the Portland Plaza initially didn't sell well. People had been living in or near downtown for decades, but many of those immigrant neighborhoods were eradicated during the 1950s and '60s by urban renewal.

When it was completed in 1973, just three years after the Keller Fountain (known then as the Forecourt Fountain), the idea of contemporary or luxury living in Portland, especially in a tower, was new. There were the nearby Harrison Tower Apartments, completed in 1965, but not too many others. So the Portland Plaza was symbolic of downtown becoming more vertical and possibly more of a place to live. As it turned out, there weren't to many other residential towers built downtown in the ensuing years, until maybe the nearby KOIN Center in 1984. Apparently the extras added in 1978 helped, because the building soon filled up, including, the story goes, a member or two of the Trail Blazers who enjoyed making use of the hot tub.

The Portland Plaza's library and lobby (Brian Libby)

We next moved inside, where Staicoff Design's re-imagination of the lobby and a few additional tenant areas such as a small library and reading room is very well done. In the lobby where one enters, the moves are fairly simple. There used to be more of a barrier between the entry and the elevators, but Staicoff created a better balance with some colorful and decorative screens that sit atop a contemporary fireplace. There is a band of stained wood that extends from a far wall and continues across the ceiling to frame the seating area as something a bit cozier.

My favorite space on the ground floor, though, was a few feet away: a library that's got one wall clad completely in wood (with a line of built-in bookshelves along the lower portion) and another wall (forming the exterior of the building) of floor-to-ceiling glass. This library existed before the renovation, I believe including both walls. But it feels brighter, less dusty and forgotten now, and more elegant. A change-out of the curtains to something more whispy and transparent certainly helped, as did new furniture.

Our tour then moved back outside, to the extended plaza extending east from the back of the building. This is actually where one of the biggest transformations occurred.

The Portland Plaza's plaza (Brian Libby)

The outdoor plaza here becomes a kind of podium as it faces Fourth Avenue, which is down the hill from Fifth and ought to have long offered views of the Keller Fountain. But the western side of the podium, particularly at the northeast corner, was filled with overgrown pine trees that actually blocked that view. Junker called it a "dead corner." Now, it's anything but. There is still plenty of shade, provided by the mature street trees below; in fact, they make it like being in the treetops because of the grade change. And the podium itself, here and extending back toward the building, is a place of multiple covered cooking areas, new seating, and a re-done swimming pool: a Myrtha stainless steel pool that was shipped here from Italy. When I visited, on a very hot day with a haze of forest fire smoke, it was quite tempting to just dive right in.

As my tour neared its conclusion, I started thinking further about the notion of a residential tower like the Portland Plaza that sits back from the street without retail frontage. There have been many condo and apartment towers built in the city over the past decade, particularly in the Pearl District and the South Waterfront. Nearly all of them have a podium base of two to three stories that comes all the way to the property line. It's in keeping with Portland's emphasis, through its Design Commission reviewing central-city buildings, on a rich pedestrian experience. Most all of us like having retail storefronts to pass by as we walk down the sidewalk, looking into their windows to get a glimpse inside to a restaurant or a shop.

Portland Plaza on a recent smoke-filled afternoon (Brian Libby)

Yet the very nature of retail is fundamentally changing. While we'll always need places to eat and drink, and to buy certain essentials, online shopping is causing a major, long-term decline in physical retail. Much of that decline is taking its biggest toll on big-box retail chains and shopping malls, the places I avoid like the plague. But it's not exclusively killing off retail spaces that are as big as blimp hangars and corporate chains without a whiff of authenticity. It's happening to mom-and-pop retail too. If Portland keeps building mixed-use buildings all over town with ground-floor retail, can we really fill those retail spaces? If not, do we really need all those podiums?

Meanwhile, I will continue to have a soft spot for the Portland Plaza. For me there has always been something heroic about its architectural form. Though at 272 feet it's only the 20th-tallest building in Portland, it's a slender tower, with elegant proportions. And if you actually look at the list of tallest buildings, take a look at their shapes. Except for the John Ross Tower in South Waterfront and its particularly unattractive neighbor, The Mirabella, the rest of the top 10 tall buildings are rectangular. Some might have funny-looking tops like the slanted solar panels of the Edith Green Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, or pointed tops like the KOIN Center, but they are all basically the same forms. Yet there is nothing else like the sculptural form of the Portland Plaza, whether you liken it to a Norelco shaver or a flower or just see it as a trio of aluminum and glass-clad cylinders connected in the middle.

Though Halprin's fountain will always be the star of this outdoor room, the waterfall at the center of the scene and the design that made it into the history books, the Portland Plaza is the beacon: a relic from the days of bell-bottoms and eight-track tapes, but also a piece of local mid-century modern architecture that feels timeless. Thankfully buildings like this are powerful enough to attract champions who won't let them deteriorate away.

 

 

 

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Memorial Coliseum as muse: visiting Avantika Bawa's Portland Art Museum exhibit

A Coliseum drawing from Bawa's PAM show (Avantika Bawa)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Attending the opening reception last Friday for artist Avantika Bawa's new exhibition at the Portland Art Museum, part of the APEX series devoted to Pacific Northwest artists and comprised of a series of drawings devoted entirely to Veteran's Memorial Coliseum, was a treat in so many ways. And it wasn't just a treat. It was a validation.

Nine years and four months ago, Portland's then-mayor, Sam Adams, announced that Memorial Coliseum would be demolished to make way for a minor-league baseball stadium, as part of the larger effort to make Providence Park a soccer-only stadium for the Portland Timbers. At the public announcement, Adams was surprised to find a room full of Coliseum supporters opposing his demolition plan.

Since that night, there have been peaks and valleys aplenty. Adams ultimately reversed course, and sought a renovation plan that failed to reach a vote in City Council before his term ended. The building has avoided demolition threats a few times in the ensuing years, most notably from former City Council members Steve Novick and Randy Leonard, both of whom have now left office. But it has also received a National Register of Historic Places listing from the National Park Service in 2011, and a National Treasure listing from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2016. The building even received a modest $2.5 million renovation in 2017. It is still waiting for the full-scale restoration it deserves, which third-party economic studies commissioned by the City of Portland have shown would turn a profit.

Looking at Bawa's magnificent artworks Friday night, I couldn't help but marvel at how far the building has come. Even if it's still waiting for that restoration — and when public buildings wait this long it's often known as "demolition by neglect" — over these nine years the tide has more than turned. I used to hear a fair amount of skepticism from members of the public, especially conservatives. Why would anyone try to save a simple glass box like that? Everybody knows only old buildings with gargoyles get saved. Why would anyone try to preserve an NBA team's home after the team moves out? There were always easy answers to those misguided questions: modernism can be historic too, and arenas can stay busy without basketball. Yet the point is that much of the skepticism has gone away.

Seeing the Coliseum given such reverential and heroic treatment from a talented artist was a moment to savor.

At Bawa's Friday evening exhibit opening (Brian Libby)

I first met Bawa in 2015 during her show at the University of Oregon's White Box gallery, "Aqua Mapping," which explored the history, topography and climate of three separate locations. Much of Bawa's art is like this: displaying a localized scrutiny on one place, or in this case, one building. In the case of Memorial Coliseum, her focus is even tighter.

In these nearly two dozen drawings on display in the Apex show, she focuses solely on exterior views of the Coliseum, depicting its facade in a way that emphasizes the grid-like face of this circa-1960 building by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. In none of these drawings, for example, does one see the concrete seating bowl inside the glass box. In a talk with Grace Kook-Anderson, the museum's curator of Northwest art, Bawa discussed the fact that to introduce the bowl would have been to widen her focus too much, and that artistically she was for now focused on just the grid-like appearance of the exterior. (She explained that the bowl could be a subject of future artworks.)

Bawa also discussed with Kook-Anderson artistic influences on her work such as Agnes Martin, with her serene grids and stripes, and Piet Mondrian, with his blocks of color. I also saw some of Bridget Riley's pattern-making style, and in one piece of Bawa's, which depicts solely the white top of the Coliseum, I was reminded of the abstract-expressionist "zip" paintings of Barnett Newman.

One comment I heard from time to time at Friday's opening was curiosity about the fate of the building. Even for those decidedly in the pro-renovation camp, the Coliseum saga has dragged on for so long now that it's easy to lose track of what's going on. Basically, I told those who asked, the Coliseum is in better shape than it's been in years thanks to last year's $2.5 million "refresh," as it was called. The National Treasure listing in 2016, and the National Trust's ensuing and ongoing involvement, have helped cement perception of the Coliseum as an architectural landmark too special and too busy to tear down. (It continues to host over 100 events a year and break even.)

Bawa with curator Grace Kook-Anderson, and another Coliseum drawing (Brian Libby)

Last year's introduction of the Albina Vision, an urban design plan for the Rose Quarter designed by Hennebery Eddy for a consortium led by Zari Santner and the Meyer Memorial Trust's Rukaiyah Adams, also helped articulate the Coliseum as part of a future high-density, mixed-use neighborhood. City leaders responded positively to the plan, which helps stitch back together the neighborhood that used to be there before Interstate 5, Emanuel Hospital and the Coliseum itself were built. The Coliseum can actually be part of revitalizing the neighborhood that used to be there, acting not just as a place for concerts and sporting events but as a building serving the community.

Yet these ongoing dramas should not form the narrative of Bawa's show. You don't have to know about urban-renewal financing or City Hall politics or the economics of large entertainment venues to appreciate Avantika's drawings. In a way, you don't even have to have an abiding love of the Coliseum itself. You just have to stand there and let her drawings wash over you. I appreciate a particular duality: that the drawings themselves are very precise, but Bawa still lets us see the imperfections of the human hand. To me it's like a jazz musician bending the notes: making you aware of precision by playing with those rules. I also love works such as these that seem to straddle a line between representationalism and abstraction. These are not abstract works, for it's clear the Coliseum is being depicted. Yet the geometry of the building as imagine by Bawa allows one to become temporarily immersed in the language of the drawing in a way that becomes experiential, and about more than seeing the building that exists across the river in drawing form. Bawa's drawings are greater than the sum of her graphite strokes, just as the Coliseum's architecture is something greater than the sum of its steel and glass: something transcendent.

Bawa's APEX show at PAM runs through February 9. If you love architecture, and love seeing it depicted with a long, deep gaze by an exceptionally talented artist, this show is, well, the apex.

 

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Wood and glass, transmogrified: visiting Gethsemani Funeral Home

Gethsemani Catholic Cemetery and Funeral Home (Pete Eckert)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For a recent article in Retrofit magazine, I had the chance to visit the Gethsemani Catholic Cemetery and Funeral Home, with a focus on the transformation of the Archdiocese of Portland's midcentury-modern administration building there into a full-service funeral home with a small chapel and a crematorium.

Maybe the idea of visiting a funeral home sounds a bit morbid. On the morning I visited, for example, in the chapel a viewing ceremony was being prepared for a teenage boy who, no matter the circumstances, ought to have lived a much longer life. It was also a bit surreal entering the crematorium and seeing the oven where human remains become ashes collected in an urn. Yet good design can make the experience of commemorating a loved one's passing a little bit better or at least a little bit easier of an experience, and that's what I saw from the work of DiLoreto Architecture here. From the bountiful natural light to the extensive use of natural materials like wood, this relatively modest 3,000 square foot expansion of the original 2,000-square foot original building was carried out smartly and sensitively.

Besides simply adding square footage, the newly expanded building now had to achieve a careful balance: providing the solemnity and contemplative spaces that would gracefully shepherd families through their most difficult hour, yet also attending to the functional needs of its office and crematorium staff.

“It really was just an office building for the cemetery side with records storage and restrooms for families visiting the cemetery,” explained Tim Corbett, director of cemeteries for the Archdiocese of Portland, in the Retrofit article. “Many funeral homes say, ‘We refrigerate at this facility; we embalm at this facility; we cremate at this facility.’ We wanted to put all of those items into our building." But size was a concern: how to introduce a chapel and all the attendant funeral-home capabilities on a limited amount of available land while also retaining the office.

When I think back to visiting this project, inevitably it's the chapel that comes to mind.

Vigil chapel, Gethsemani Funeral Home (Pete Eckert)

It's a small space, at just 25 seats. “We purposely didn’t have a large chapel and area to seat people because we want you to be at your parish,” Corbett explained. The Gethsemani Funeral Home’s chapel is intended primarily for viewings, or rosaries, the first of a three-stage Catholic liturgical tradition before mass and then committal to the cemetery.

Even so, the little chapel feels spacious. Although the lobby maintained the original building’s low ceilings, which are only eight feet high, the lobby gives way to a 22-foot-high chapel clad in naturally stained tongue-in-groove Douglas fir. The client had initially suggested wainscoting along the bottom half of the chapel interior to save money. “But at the end of the day the architects made the right call,” Corbett says. “Long after cost is forgotten, the quality will be there.”

The wood-festooned wall and ceiling panels also mask layers of sound-absorbing landscape fabric, giving this solemn yet subtly beautiful space an intimate ambiance despite the high ceilings. “There’s no echo. You don’t have to talk too loudly,” said Architect Christopher LoNigro of DiLoreto Architecture. “I love that as people walk into the chapel, their voices lower just a little.”

At the top of the chapel, a clerestory window to the north (repurposed from the existing office) and a long slot window to the south bring a stream of sunlight and views of the sky into the space. "We wanted to maintain the feel of the original midcentury building, which had a wonderful indoor-outdoor feel because of the natural light,” architect Tracy Orvis of DiLoreto told me.

Gethsemani entry and lobby (Pete Eckert)

The natural light and transparency only increase in the rest of the space. At the entrance to the building, the architects made use of floor-to-ceiling glass, but only after deliberation. “I was wrongly interested in the isolation of people who might be mourning,” LoNigro said. Coming through the door, an artfully colorful mosaic image of Jesus Christ “would be a little surprise as you entered.” The original office is tucked in back, separated from the lobby with a maple-paneled wall that gives way to clerestory windows above to bring light from the lobby to employees’ workstations.

Because the original building was placed closed to the road, the front facade needed to provide the main public entrance and the service entrance. To differentiate between the two and make the public entrance clearly visible while camouflaging the service entrance, a canopy extends over the glass entry on the south side of the building while the service entrance on the north side of the building was clad in the same exterior tongue-in-groove cedar as this portion of the facade. Although the original office structure and the first-floor base of the building are clad in stone, to maintain and emphasize the horizontality of the original Midcentury building, a thin band of this cedar cladding runs along the entire front facade above the stone. “We needed the chapel and the chimney to feel like all the same space,” LoNigro explained.

The crematory machine and its controls (Brian Libby)

Being in the crematorium space, as you might imagine, felt a bit strange. The oven itself is really just a big piece of industrial equipment, and it's located in what is basically a garage. If you back away from it too absentmindedly, you might back right into the hearse.

When I visited the Gethsemani Funeral Home expansion, there was an additional architectural treat waiting a few hundred steps to the south: an existing stand-alone chapel building completed in 1961 and designed by Jacobberger, Franks and Norman.

The name Jacobberger is a fairly significant one in Portland architectural history. Joseph Jacobberger was one of the city's most acclaimed architects of the century's first three decades, his completed buildings including St. Mary's Cathedral (1925), the B.P. John building at Marylhurst University (1929), the Calumet Hotel (1907) and a master plan for the University of Portland (then known as Columbia University). Most of all, though, Jacobberger was known for his houses, designing over 260 in his career (about 130 of which remain today).

Joseph and Francis Jacobberger (FindAGrave.com)

This chapel was not designed by Joseph Jacobberger, because he died in 1930 and this building was completed 31 years later. His son Francis Jacobberger spent decades designing buildings here as well, including many houses (he could be considered part of the Northwest Modern regional style that emerged here in the midcentury) as well as public projects such as the Oregon State School for the Blind in Salem. Sadly, both Joseph and Francis Jacobberger died in their early 60s: Joseph at 62 and Francis at 63.

The chapel feels like a religious space created in the early 1960s, with a large amount of light coming through huge, wildly colorful expanses of stained glass. Rather than evoking images of Jesus or Mary, the chapel's stained glass is comprised of simple geometric shapes. To my eyes it is both dated and delightful.

Gethsemani's existing 1961 chapel (Brian Libby)

I'm not a churchgoer, and in today's world, I'm more suspicious of tribalism in all its forms: national, religious, even sports teams. Yet my favorite type of architecture has always been public gathering spaces, where people from all walks of life come together: concert halls and arenas, stadiums, amphitheaters, small clubs, and the ecclesiastical architecture of synagogues, churches, temples and mosques.

Church services are about congregations, but whether it's at a church or a funeral home, I think of the funerals I've attended in recent years and how they often bring together people of disparate places and cultures. I'll never forget attending my grandmother's funeral in November 2016 just a few days after the presidential election: a week of double traumas. Because the funeral was in a small town and most of the extended family was religious, I was probably outnumbered by Trump voters ten to one. But mercifully that didn't really come up. That had more to do with a shared love of my grandmother than it did the architecture, but the church was still where it happened: a time-out from the chaos and horrors of the outside world, a refuge, even at a moment of shared personal grief—or maybe especially then.

The best thing I can say about DiLoreto's Gethsemani expansion is that I can imagine being in that little 25-person chapel and uplifted: by the beauty of the soaring, double-height space and the enveloping feel of the Douglas fir wall panels, the clerestory windows revealing blue sky and clouds where most would be windowless. As much as I enjoyed visiting the larger 1961 chapel and its colorful stained glass, it's the newer, smaller spaces that really feels special. I just wish it were in Portland and not in the suburb of Happy Valley, just beyond the gargantuan eyesore and taste-vacuum that is Clackamas Town Center. Thankfully DiLoreto Architects has made a habit of designing compelling public spaces, be it cultural centers like Nordia House or other religious buildings, in a variety of locations. Hey guys, how about a meditation chapel in close-in Southeast Portland?

 

 

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The quintessentially Oregon architecture of John Storrs: remembering and revisiting

Myrtle Drive residence by John Storrs (Drew Nasto)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For the past few years, Restore Oregon's annual Mid-Century Modern Tour has been devoted to the work of one architect each year. In the past, major names of the Northwest Modern regional style like Pietro Belluschi, Van Evera Bailey and William Fletcher have been featured, and this year the trend continues with a quintet of homes designed by the great John Storrs (including the Myrtle Drive residence, pictured above).

Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1920, Storrs was an Eagle Scout who became an all-American swimmer at Dartmouth University before commanding a small sub-chaser attack ship in the US Navy during World War II. Receiving a master's degree in architecture at Yale University after the war, he initially practiced architecture for a few years in Fairfield, Connecticut but, after hearing a lecture by Belluschi was inspired to move to Portland in 1954. His first major commission was for the Portland Garden Club, which remains, and he would go on to design some 80 houses in addition to noteworthy projects including the World Forestry Center and the Oregon College of Art & Craft in Portland as well as much of Salishan Lodge on the Oregon coast near Lincoln City.

Although Belluschi and John Yeon may be the most revered architects of Northwest Modern houses (single-family homes get the majority of attention when referring to this kind of regionalism), the architecture of John Storrs—who is part of a second generation that also included names like Saul Zaik, Donald Blair and the aforementioned Fletcher—may be what feels the most quintessentially Oregon to me more than the work of any other local architect. That very well may be a personal bias, because my childhood in Oregon was often spent at places like Salishan and Sokol Blosser's original tasting room in rural Yamhill County (with my wine-enthusiast parents). But I also think it comes from the fact that Storrs buildings, be they his approximately 80 houses or the aforementioned public spaces, feel both rustic and grand in a way that seems to capture the essence of this place, or at least as I knew it growing up the 1970s.

Last Friday I happened to attend a lecture by Anthony Belluschi about his father's career, which at one point noted the woven-wood ceilings that are highlights of certain Pietro Belluschi-designed houses like the Sutor and the Burkes. I love those woven-wood ceilings dearly and marvel every time I see one in person, but John Storrs would never have designed something that precious. Both architects came to Oregon from elsewhere: Belluschi from Italy and Storrs from Connecticut. And in both architects you see a real reverence and love for wood as a material. But for Belluschi that wood seemed to become refined, whereas Storrs was perhaps more about the exposed huge ceiling beam and the orchestration of a perfect view from inside. Even if it's not literally accurate, in my mind I can feel the coarse, un-sanded surface of the wood in a Storrs building, as if its modernism is infused or merged with the DNA of a cabin: not quite as rustic, but certainly simple. Even though Storrs designs felt grander than, say, an old Oregon farmhouse or barn, and though his work seemed comparable to other West Coast modernists, his work in particular reminds me that the Northwest Modern style draws not just from Japanese or Scandinavian architecture but also our local vernacular.

Grieves residence, completed in 1960 (Fran Storrs/Architectural Heritage Center)

"I think for Storrs’ Northwest Regional style houses, it came down to the quality of the materials more so than anything else," agrees Val Ballestrem of the Architectural Heritage Center, who will this Friday evening will be co-presenting with architect Paul McKean a lecture on Storrs. "His houses from the 1950s and early 1960s are not what I would call high style, but were well built with quality materials and fairly simple designs." Yet they exhibit a kind of grandness in their form, be it in the pitch of the sloping, overhanging roof or in the patina and texture of the timber.

In its press release for the tour, Restore Oregon provided a list of design elements common to Storrs. The first is a main living space that opens to large exterior views. "The view is generally through a bank of ganged windows, as opposed to the pre-mid-century approach of placing windows evenly throughout a wall," the text goes. "The former approach creates a sense of the wall removed and a stronger connection to the outdoors.'"

This also dovetails with something the architect's son, chef and Noble Rot owner Leather Storrs told me. "He’d always say, 'Build corners you can back into,'" the younger Storrs recalls, "and 'design the room from the bed, with lower windowsills so you can look out while you’re lying down."

Restore Oregon's list goes on to list design elements like a central fireplace, glass corners without supporting frames (which I believe is also a design trait of Frank Lloyd Wright), an entry breezeway (often made of glass) connecting the public living wing and the private bedroom wing, low-slung gabled eaves and sloping roofs, wood used expressively as a ceiling surface, unpainted or unstained natural wood, and private courtyards.

One can't talk about John Storrs without discussing his big, boisterous personality. "People were initially intimidated by him," says architect Paul McKean. "I spent an afternoon with his wife, and she said, 'If you’re not sure if you ever met John or not, you didn’t. There’s no way to meet him and not remember him.' He was a big guy, very boisterous. He had a very cutting sense of humor. He was a big personality but also a really good collaborator, and it shows in the relationships he had with people like [developer] John Gray, [landscape architect] Barbara Fealy, [wood sculptor] LeRoy Setzol, and builders. He had great relationships with his sort of circle."

Even his best and most respected collaborators found working with Storrs difficult sometimes, or vice versa. "My dad and Barbara [Fealy], they had a real pissing match," Leather Storrs remembers, referring to collaborative Storrs-Feeley projects like the Oregon College of Art & Craft. "They both undid the other’s work when one was out of town. My father, people felt very strongly about him in both directions."

John Storrs (Fran Storrs/Architectural Heritage Center)

Yet it would be a mistake to focus too long on Storrs as larger-than-life personality, when it was his vision as an architect that endures. And as his son points out, even if Storrs had an ego, he understood that it was the landscape and the materials that should do the talking.

"I think his genius was unlocking the relationship of a building to its setting and maximizing that: trying to be a steward of the environment rather than obliterate it," Leather Storrs says. "He’s not trying to tame the land. He’s trying to talk to it. That was at odds with my father’s personality: ego and 'look at me.' Yet he understood that he would be celebrated if he celebrated that." Leather Storrs says his father came to understand that Oregon was not a place where wealth was celebrated ostentatiously. "He used to say if you wanted to find the richest guy in the room look for the oldest sport coat. There’s always been a certain amount of quietness and not showing off wealth. A lot of people who moved here decided they were going to not trumpet. It was an affluence that didn’t register. It’s a Portland thing. It’s not marble and gilt. It’s built-ins that juxtaposes the rock and the wood."

"For me, his houses aren’t showy," the younger Storrs continues. "They don’t necessarily have curb appeal. But there is a kind of innate rightness to them: a comfort you feel. I think his genius was the willingness and the bravery to let the natural stuff talk, and not impose himself. Let the materials do the talking. I don’t want to say that’s humble because my dad was anything but. But it takes some guts not to put your stamp on it. That I think resonated with some people. They got it. And that’s something about Oregon. You can be a native or a transplant, but you either get it or you don’t."

One highlight of McKean's lecture on Friday will be a unique Storrs project from 1959 in collaboration with structural engineer James G. Pierson, an outlier compared to the other homes, lodgings or public buildings comprising the rest of his portfolio: the Forest Products Pavilion at the Oregon Centennial Exposition, marking the state's 100th birthday. It was really more of an elaborate covered outdoor area than a building, but oh my! What a cool structure.

Forest Products Pavilion, completed in 1959 (Restore Oregon)

"Storrs was given the task of designing a building at once striking and useful and, in the process, adapted the mathematical concept of the hyperbolic-paraboloid to his purpose," a West Coast Lumbermen's Association brochure from the exposition reads. "The result is an imaginative structure of sweeping lines and dramatic upward thrust, built almost entirely with lumber and wood products. It is emblematic of wood's ability to keep pace with modern design and to imaginatively couple beauty with utility."

Unfortunately, the Forest Products Pavilion collapsed during the Columbus Day Storm of 1962, just three years after its completion. Perhaps if the project was structurally viable, it was a bit of a stretch. After all, the unspoken narrative of the FPP was that the wood industry was struggling to compete with increasingly heroic architectural forms being made in the mid-20th century with concrete and steel, such as Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Here in Portland, the wood industry initially opposed Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's decision to design a steel-framed Memorial Coliseum [now Veterans Memorial Coliseum]. Even so, I find myself smitten with the Forest Products Pavilion and I can't help but wish it could someday be rebuilt.

"It’s a super interesting: how does Northwest modernism meet what’s elsewhere happening in the world, these sort of organic structural buildings? But that’s what the pavilion is," McKean says. "It’s Northwest Douglas fir meeting that kind of engineering. Storrs's other work isn’t really like that. It’s post and beam construction."

That Storrs would (with Pierson's help) try new things and stretch himself, like his boisterous yet sometimes difficult personality, indicate to me that Storrs was and had the temperament of an artist. Architecture as a profession and discipline has always been interesting to me because it seems to straddle right-brain and left-brain thinking. It requires creativity as well as practical problem-solving and people skills. But no one is all one or the other so much as occupying a place in the spectrum. "My dad’s architecture was definitely ambitious," Leather Storrs says. "There is a kind of a built-in fragility to his stuff, which is tricky in terms of architecture. I think a lot of the designs remain timeless, but from a construction point of view that wasn't always the case."

Frank White residence at Salishan Lodge (Fran Storrs/Architectural Heritage Center)

Whether it's because of that artistic temperament or due to other circumstances, Storrs wasn't quite as prolific in his later years. For a few years, he and his family moved to England for his wife's career, and Storrs, perhaps finding practicing architecture in a new country a bit of an obstacle course, wound up attending culinary school.

"It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do architecture," Leather Storrs says. "Part of it had to do my mother’s career. I think he would have liked to have done more work." But the times may have also been changing, both for Storrs and his customers. "Maybe people were wanting architects who actually listened to their clients. My father’s brilliance was also tempered by alcoholism and a nasty streak. All that stuff conspired. He didn’t want to listen to some housewife tell him she needed a breakfast nook." After initially working on the John's Landing development, for example, Storrs also parted ways with developer John Gray, who had been his client at Salishan."My dad had so many ideas about the way that space would be used, and John Gray was over it: 'Give me a building. I don’t need your manifest.'"

"My dad, he would not like to work in this climate," Leather Storrs adds. "He liked being able to change things instantly. CAD and all of the permitting and all of the restrictions on building took a lot of the joy and creativity out of architecture. My dad was the sort of person who would stand in a space and the building would wash over him. He would need somebody to put appropriate engineering underneath his ideas. But if you believed in my dad’s vision and you were willing to let him do it, magical things would happen."

 

 

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Restoring Pietro Belluschi's Sutor House

Sutor House foyer (Brian Flaherty for Dwell)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In the November issue of Dwell magazine, I had the opportunity to write about one of the great works of residential architecture in Portland: the Jennings Sutor House by Pietro Belluschi from 1938, which has undergone a renovation overseen and designed by the legendary architect's son, Anthony Belluschi. After summarizing the story in 500 brief words for the magazine, I can flesh it out a little more here.

Any house by Pietro Belluschi is of course significant, for he and John Yeon are, along with A.E. Doyle, Belluschi's former boss (because of Doyle's Wentz Cottage on the Oregon coast), the forefathers of the regional Northwest Modern house style that married International Style modernism with wood buildings featuring pitched roofs, large overhangs and a combination of local traditions (farmhouses, barns) and Japanese influences.

The Sutor is particularly special. It's not the absolute first Belluschi-designed house. That would be the Council Crest House, completed in 1937, which a few years ago was renovated by Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works Architecture. It undeniably shows a recognizable Belluschi fingerprint, but with its brick facade and simple boxiness, it is arguably a reflection of Belluschi at the time working in architect Doyle's office. Belluschi biographer Meredith Clausen in her book Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect describes the Council Crest house as being identifiably Belluschi and Northwest yet retaining "lingering Georgian associations" from Doyle. There was also an existing farmhouse in Aloha that Belluschi renovated for his family.

Yet the Sutor, along with the John Yeon-designed Watzek House completed a year earlier, really came to establish the Northwest Modern regional style from the template of Doyle's Wentz Cottage. "It was a significant change in the sense of establishing that midcentury modern direction," explained Anthony Belluschi of the Sutor House in our interviews for the Dwell article.

Sutor House exterior (Brian Flaherty for Dwell)

Great as the Sutor House is, the story really starts with the hillside site. "He knew the hillside because he’d worked on the design for the Watzek," while in Doyle's office, Anthony added. (Yeon was not licensed as an architect so Doyle's office served as architect of record.) "He’d walked the site. And Jennings Sutor was wealthy enough he could afford a piece of property with that view, the original view, of Mt. Hood: he understood how important it was to get a view from every room. He did such a great job of siting the house. I think the Sutor is remarkable in the sense of the siting. It’s the best use of a great piece of property given the view corridor and the garden."

The Sutor was also about showcasing Belluschi's fascination with wood, Anthony Belluschi said of Pietro: "He came from Italy. They don’t have big forests at all. When he came to the Northwest, you’ll see the Portland Art Museum is brick and travertine, but his fascination with houses was he had access to these natural materials like the wood. He got into that. It was all new to him, whereas others took it for granted: the grains of the different woods. I think he really mastered that." At the same time, the Sutor House, like the Watzek, really shows the influence of Japanese architecture on Northwest Modernism. Looking at the house it's not hard to see its resemblance to a traditional pagoda.

In the Sutor's case case, the Japanese influence can be seen not just in the house itself but the garden. The Sutor occupies a four-acre site bordering a protected forested hillside. While designing the house, Belluschi befriended Jiro Harada, a professor at the Imperial Household Museum in Tokyo and author of numerous books on Japanese gardens and architecture who was in the Northwest as a visiting professor at the University of Oregon. Influenced by Harada, Belluschi and local landscape architect Florence Holmes Gerke created an elegant, Japanese-style strolling garden. A 1948 Sunset magazine article concentrated more on the house’s garden-like setting than on its architecture.

Owner Aric Wood pointing out portions of the uncovered garden (Brian Libby)

"When Hirada was lecturing at the Portland Art Museum he and Belluschi struck up a number of conversations that stimulated his ideas about Japanese art and architecture: the basket weave ceiling, the overhanging eaves," explained the Sutor's current owner, Aric Wood. But in subsequent decades, the garden, perhaps Hirada's biggest influence on Belluschi, was until recently, mostly buried.

With its large roof overhangs (a staple of Northwest Modern) and its covered backyard portico, the design is meant to foster indoor-outdoor living. "When you live here you recognize the house and the garden are inseparable," Wood added. "We kind of flow through the house with the seasons. Spring and summer, our living room is the portico. The dining room is the terrace. The winter we contract to the hearth."

Anthony Belluschi acted not only as the architect supervising the renovation, but also a kind of matchmaker between the Sutor's last owner, André Stevens and its new one, as he has done for other houses designed by his father.

"I knew André going back 25 years," he recalled. A few years ago she approached Anthony about becoming the owner himself. "I was a long way from having any idea of when I’d come back to Portland but knew I was destined. She said in her Swiss accent, 'I so want you to have this house.' I said, 'I really love it.' It’s a wonderful piece of property, and other than the house he designed for our family in 1937, it’s the first he did for a client in the style he wanted. I stayed in touch, and any time I came to Portland I’d go up to see the house and say hello."

But he wasn't quite ready to move here, and when he did, Belluschi had his eye on the house his parents had ultimately occupied, the Burkes house. "Of the 35 plus houses my father did, the Sutor house and this one [the Burkes] are the best in terms of siting, layout, materials," he told me. "Without exception, the cream of the crop was the houses he did from the late '30s, '40s and '50s."

Sutor House living room and extended entertaining space (Brian Flaherty for Dwell)

If Anthony Belluschi wasn't going to live in the Sutor, he decided to play matchmaker. First he took two well-known architects on tours of the Sutor house, each interested in purchasing. But one of them already owned a Pietro Belluschi house and decided to stay in it. The other intended to make some major alterations to the Sutor. "That was distressing to André," Marti Belluschi, Anthony's wife, told me. "She wanted a buyer who appreciated it as-is."

That's when Anthony approached Wood, a fellow member of the Pacific Northwest College of Art board of directors. "André took him on a tour and he just fell in love," Belluschi recalls. "We knew he'd be a perfect owner." There was even a moment when Wood, touring the house with Belluschi and Stevens, identified a location in a painting of the Alps near Stevens' original home in Switzerland. It helped seal the notion that he was the right person to whom Stevens could sell the house. And ironically, Wood's company, XPLANE, is based in the Pietro Belluschi-designed Equitable Building downtown, perhaps the most important building in the acclaimed architect's entire career. Anthony Belluschi says Wood may be the only person in the world who lives and works in two different Pietro buildings.

To buy the Sutor house, though, meant Wood would have to abandon his dream-house plans. "I had bought a piece of land on Skyline Boulevard. My dream was to build a home," he said. "I had the permits set and was ready to break ground." But ultimately Wood fell in love with the Sutor.

Unfortunately the house had been altered from Pietro Belluschi's original design, but not irreversibly so. One of the bedrooms near the entrance, originally the maid's quarters, had been turned into a breakfast nook and the kitchen altered. Despite the beauty of the design, it was only a two-bedroom house, meaning Wood's two children would have to share a bedroom. But Anthony Belluschi created a restorative plan that turned the breakfast nook back into a bedroom while also shrinking the size of a wet bar attached to the kitchen in order to expand the kitchen itself.

An original layout of the house (Aric Wood)

The renovation also restored the original configuration of the entry foyer and living room. It's somewhat of a strange layout, in that after passing the magnificent foyer, with its woven-wood ceiling and a curving grass paper-clad wall, one enters a kind of under-utilized space that can be considered part of an extended living room — ideal for entertaining during the days when Sutor, a well-connected bachelor, owned the house — but during Stevens' ownership had become a kind of second living room attached to the first. The Anthony Belluschi design removed the second living room and restored a series of built-in bookshelves that, along with a credenza, help give proper definition to each space.

As one enters the restored Sutor house, the pairing back of furniture and clutter in that double-sized living room allows one to really marvel at the gorgeous interiors and materials. Anthony Belluschi believes that curving wood wall at the foyer, for example, shows his father's Italian roots, as does the way the zebra wood-clad living room wall also curves at the corner of the space. "As Tony reminds me, this house was designed for entertaining," Wood said. "Sutor was a bachelor. For banquets or dances they needed that [extra] space off the living room. We didn’t get a feel for that initially because of how the prior owners had renovated that space. As soon as we restored it back to the original plan, you could feel it instantly."

What's also unmistakable about the house is the bounty of natural light. Not only is there floor-to-ceiling glass at the entrance and a long row of windows forming the living-room wall, but the relatively long, thin form of the house means there is always light coming in from at least two sides. Sitting in the living room, you get not only the light coming through its wall of windows but from the floor-to-ceiling glass at the patio just beyond the dining room table. The renovation also restored a wall of mirrors in the dining room perpendicular to the glass wall at the patio. So much natural light comes through the main living-dining space that the relatively dark zebra-wood walls and oak floor almost seem to glow.

Then there's the garden, which is not only huge given the four-acre property and the forested canyon it overlooks, but also the Japanese garden that Wood and his family have slowly uncovered. "We found so much buried. I never would have imagined that hillside was a strolling garden," Wood said. "It was so overgrown you couldn’t even find the rock wall. Then we followed the rock wall to find the stone steps. We dug out the stone steps to find the path. Last summer we discovered the pathways heading into the forest [the canyon sloping down from their property]. We found paths down to the creek and back up. It’s been kind of a continuous process of uncovering."

Looking at the Sutor House today, even in the context of there being many wonderful houses that Pietro Belluschi designed over some 50 years, I can't help but feel it ranks near the very top of the list if not the very top. Anthony Belluschi is understandably partial to the Burkes, which he and Marti live in. And indeed, it has panoramic views east of downtown Portland, Mt. Hood, Mt. Saint Helens and more, not to mention a wonderfully intimate courtyard, with natural light permeating every inch of the interior. The Burkes may for that reason be the best Pietro Belluschi residential architectural experience.

Even so, at least for now I find myself even more drawn to the Sutor. The way the perches on that hillside, the garage it sits on acting partially as a plinth, makes the Sutor seem very grand, almost like a little Acropolis, despite its modest size. With its pitched roof and large overhangs, it shows the Japanese influence more than perhaps most Belluschi or Northwest Modern houses. And inside the materials are particularly memorable, particularly the aforementioned woven-wood ceiling, and the curving walls of exotic zebra wood and grass cloth. You feel all of Belluschi's influences in the house as well as, dare I say it, his competition with John Yeon after the bad blood that emerged from the Watzek (Doyle's office, which Belluschi was of course part of at the time, was in the past sometimes unfairly given credit for Yeon's design, which understandably embittered Yeon). Yet I have come to think of the Watzek and the Sutor as companion pieces. While the Sutor feels more classical, with its formal layout and its stately portico facing east, the Sutor is more Japanese, and yet they resemble each other perhaps more than they resemble their influences.

Talking with Anthony Belluschi, I also have a renewed sense of the late 1930s and 1940s as a particularly golden time for the architect. "He did St. Thomas Moore the same time as the Sutor House," he told me, referring to the great early Catholic church completed in 1940. "Those were all the best projects, from the '30s and '40s. Then he was less knee-deep in alligators on each project." In that way, Belluschi's very success and ambitions became for him a challenge, a juggling act, that ultimately led to his leaving Portland for some 20 years to be the dean of MIT's architecture school. During and after that time, Belluschi would produce some of his most famous designs, such as the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco and the Julliard School at Lincoln Center in New York, as well as a co-design of the Pan Am building there. Yet that pre-MIT period may still be the time of his simplest, finest architecture.

"Having the office here, the churches and houses were actually his favorite thing to do," Anthony Belluschi says of his father. "I think he put so much time and energy into the Equitable, and I think that was the crowning achievement in the first half of his career. The second part going to MIT, I think that’s a whole different scenario. The consulting role in that period was how he got involved with so many projects. I clearly think that the houses starting with the Sutor and up through this house [the Burkes], and the churches, are all gems. There aren’t many exceptions."

  

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Checking out Veterans Memorial Coliseum's $5 million refresh

Veterans Memorial Coliseum entry (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Let me start as I always do when I write about Memorial Coliseum by admitting I'm far from an impartial observer. Stuart Emmons and I founded the Friends of Memorial Coliseum in the spring of 2009 to fight a planned demolition of the building, and after that initial victory we've spent the past eight years campaigning for a full restoration.

The $5 million "refresh," as this new remodel is being called, is not a full restoration. With the upcoming Phil Knight Invitational college basketball tournament (also known as PK80) coming to both the Moda Center and the Coliseum from November 23-27, however, the City of Portland has spent the past two years and $5 million on a series of improvements to the building: some cosmetic and very visible, others more physical and structural but just as important.

Even if it's not the full restoration we've been looking for, visiting the Coliseum a few times over the past few days, I can't help but smile at this mini-restoration overseen by Merryman Barnes Architects.

It starts at the arena's entrance, where the wood glulams between the panes of glass on the curtain wall have been stripped of their paint and stained to reveal the natural finish. The wood beams beneath the entry canopy have also been sanded down and stained. Even better, the unnecessary second wall of glass at the entry, which blocked views of the free-standing concrete seating bowl, have also been removed.

New concourse lighting and signage (Brian Libby)

Moving into the concourse, I was also very excited to see the new lighting, which is a custom remanufacturing of the Coliseum's original wagonwheel lights. That's particularly significant because the lamps project light both down onto the concourse and upward to illuminate the bowl itself. In historic photos of Memorial Coliseum taken after its completion in 1960, those lights caused the arena bowl to look like an illuminated spaceship floating inside the glass box. Also new in the concourse are redone concession stands with new electronic signage for menus and the capacity for serving more food and drink quickly, as well as repainted signage and surfaces along the outside of the seating bowl between the concessions.

Last summer, the Coliseum also got a new roof, which will help the building remain resilient in the face of increasingly inclement weather due to climate change. Thankfully the building is already well equipped to survive most earthquakes, though, thanks to an innovative system of ball bearings between the Coliseum's four columns and the roof trusses, which allows the entire roof to move on the columns.

There is also one addition to the concourse experience that is not actually inside the concourse and is technically a subtraction rather than an addition: the thinning out of the trees along the west facade of the building. This is still an ongoing process, and most of the trees will remain, but the building will no longer be quite so hidden away by trees when viewed from the west side of the city, and when in the concourse it will be easier to look out at Downtown and the Pearl District through the giant glass curtain wall. It's something we've been advocating for many years and are pretty excited about. As I understand it, only dead or ailing trees were removed, or ones that were impacting the building's foundation.

Inside the arena, there is an all-new LED lighting scheme that allows a wider variety of lighting options, but what people will really notice is the new video scoreboard. Until recently, the Coliseum still had a scoreboard hanging over center court (or center ice) that dated to when the Trail Blazers last called the building home in the mid-'90s. Now, the video-scoreboard screen in the Coliseum is actually a higher resolution than what exists in the Moda Center.

I can't wait to attend the Phil Knight Invitational and experience the Coliseum with a potentially full house of basketball fans from around the country. But it's also an exciting time for Veterans Memorial Coliseum even beyond PK80 and the $5 million refresh.

New signage commemorating historic Coliseum events (Brian Libby)

Recently a public-private consortium of leaders led by Meyer Memorial Trust chief investment officer Rukaiyah Adams and former Portland Parks  director Zari Santner — but also including local leaders like former Urban League of Portland CEO Michael Alexander, Moda Health executive vice president Steve Wynne, former city commissioner Jim Francesconi and developers John Carroll and Tom Cody — came together to create what is called the Albina Vision, which seeks to re-establish a new version of the neighborhood that once existed here, before it was demolished by urban renewal projects including the Coliseum, Interstate 5 and Emmanuel Hospital.

In tandem with a planned I-5 widening at the Rose Quarter that will include a partial capping of the freeway to gain new blocks, the Albina Vision imagines a dense, mixed-use series of buildings, much of it multi-family housing that can accommodate multiple income levels, with easy access to amenities. That Albina Vision, designed by Hennebery Eddy Architects, not only imagines a future fully restored Veterans Memorial Coliseum but also makes a series of overdue urban design changes: namely burying the Rose Quarter's parking garages underground in order to build tall buildings on top of them, which also enables large public open space leading from the RQ north to Broadway and west over (a newly capped portion of) Interstate Avenue to a new riverfront park between the Broadway Bridge and Steel Bridge—essentially a new extension of the Eastbank Esplanade.

Albina Vision (Hennebery Eddy Architects)

Given the expressed support for a Veterans Memorial Coliseum full restoration from a majority of City Council members, including Mayor Ted Wheeler, Commissioner Nick Fish, Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and Commissioner Amanda Fritz, there is more reason than ever to believe this $5 million refresh is only the beginning.

After all, a 2015 third-party economic study commissioned by the City of Portland shows that the city needs a venue in the 5,000 to 8,000-seat range, which doesn't otherwise exist in the city. The study even showed that a venue of this size would be fairly unique in the entire Pacific Northwest, meaning the Coliseum could attract a lot more concert and entertainment business than it does today. The larger renovation would help modernize some of the behind-the-house infrastructure any arena needs, like a loading dock large enough to accommodate multiple vehicles and ceiling rigging robust enough to accommodate elaborate stage sets. In other words, as the study laid out, these Coliseum investments would pay for themselves through increased bookings, amounting to an estimated $2 billion in economic impact over 20 years.

Memorial Coliseum in 1960 (Art Hupy/University of Washington)

As we know from eight years of campaigning, getting a historic building restored is a long process. Even if things go our way, it probably will have taken a decade before we see a fully restored Veterans Memorial Coliseum. But as Mayor Wheeler cut the ribbon on the arena's $5 million refresh last Friday, it was more than a celebration of a new roof, video scoreboard, concessions, stained-wood glulams and signage. It was an unspoken acknowledgment that the Coliseum is going to be part of Portland's future.

It started little by little in 2009 with Mayor Adams rejecting the planned demolition for a minor-league baseball park, and continued with the Coliseum's National Register listing in 2011, with City Council's rejection of a Commissioner Steve Novick-led demolition effort in 2015 and the Coliseum's ensuing National Treasure listing from the National Trust in 2016. All along the way, the public at large, across America, continued to see mid-20th century modernism as a golden age of architecture and design. The building isn't truly saved just yet because it isn't fully restored, yet it's not hyperbole to suggest its whole future is what's really been refreshed here.

 

 

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Patrick Burke of Michael Graves Architecture & Design discusses the Portland Building renovation

Patrick Burke (Michael Graves Architecture & Design)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For the latest issue of Architect Magazine, I had the opportunity to write about the Portland Building's somewhat controversial renovation, which will transform the building to such a degree that the building will probably lose its National Register listing.

Writing the article, as well as an earlier blog post about the proposed renovation, has been an interesting journey in which my impression evolved.

Going into it, I was quite concerned about whether the right approach was being taken. After all, the design, by DLR Group, includes an aluminum over-cladding on the facade that will undeniably change the original structure. It also changes the windows from dark to clear, and in moving mechanical equipment to the roof may negatively affect the composition. For some preservationists, including the local DoCoMoMo chapter, the new cladding in particular was a step too far, given that the original tile and painted-concrete facade probably could have been patched up.

Normally I take pride in always taking the preservationist side. And indeed, whether one supports this bold approach for the Portland Building or not, it isn't the way we should restore most any other landmark building. In particular, it's rightly considered inauthentic for key physical alterations or additions to historic architecture to be indistinguishable from original portions of a structure. Historic Preservation 101 teaches that to maintain architectural integrity of landmark buildings we must make it clear what is original and what is a new add-on.

Yet the Portland Building is, in my view, a special case, in which the original construction—its materials and techniques—was so compromised, so cheaply done, and such a compromise of architect Michael Graves's original vision that to radically alter the building might actually make it more authentic or at least truer to that vision. One might say that this renovation isn't changing the Portland Building but completing it, over three decades after the building first opened.

While reporting on the Portland Building for Architect, I had the opportunity to talk with Patrick Burke, a principal with Michael Graves Architecture & Design who has been with the firm since 1982, joining Graves (who passed away in 2015) just as construction on the building was nearing completion. Burke has testified on DLR Group's behalf in Landmarks Commission hearings and been unequivocally supportive of the idea that making big changes to the building is something that Graves not only would have OK'd but outright advocated for.

"I don’t know if it was technically the first," Burke said as we began our conversation, referring to my point that the Portland Building was the first major postmodern building in the United States. "Charles Moore did the project in New Orleans, the Piazza d'Italia [in 1978]. But there’s no doubt it was the first major significant commission in the postmodern style. It was shocking for the architecture profession. It was in color! It had all these classical allusions and symbols. It was shocking."

"I was in my last year at architecture school, at UIC Chicago, and was applying to grad schools," Burke remembers. "I really wanted to come to Princeton and be in Michael’s studio. Progressive Architecture had an awards issue that came out with the Portland building on the cover as I was finishing school. It was like, ‘Wow, look at that.’ I was working in his office and some of my friends were mocking me: ‘This is what you want to do? This isn’t architecture.’ It really started a debate."

When Burke joined Graves's firm, the Portland Building was about halfway through construction. By the time it was completed October of 1982 the building was finished and dedicated. But how to pay for staff to attend the dedication? "The office spent nights and weekends making 150 collages about the Portland Building and sold them at a gallery to pay for us to all go out for the dedication," the architect recalls.

More importantly, Burke got a first-hand account of Graves encountering what would remain his most famous (and infamous) design. "I remember touring the building with Michael and what he felt was successful and not successful," Burke says. "Michael new there were flaws in certain ways. That building is something that he’s had to own for the rest of his career. It was a building built cheaply and had a lot of problems. Michael knew that."

Although the aluminum over-cladding is getting the most attention, the changing out of black glass for clear glass is something that Burke believes really corrects a wrong, not just in terms of performance but intent. "Michael would have said, ‘Get rid of the black glass.’ It actually was a mistake," he says. "[Architect of record Emery] Roth put it in supposedly for energy efficiency. Michael blew up. They said, 'Too late, we bought black glass.' On the tour, Michael said to me, 'We’re never letting this happen again.' And we never did."

Burke also talked about the original intent with regard to the ground-floor loggias, which have been unsuccessful as retail outlets as well as in terms of place-making in that they're not places where people like to congregate. Yet the intent was to create better street-level urban energy than corporate office towers like the Congress Center across the street.

Rendering of a renovated Portland Building (DLR Group)

"The original intent was to make it pedestrian friendly," Burke said of the covered loggias. "So many of the '60s and '70s urban buildings were building these urban plazas [at the base of office towers, as the Standard Plaza across the street does]. Michael’s point was the building should come out to meet the street line. He said, 'You should fill out the site to meet the street, but we also want to be pedestrian friendly so we’ll create this loggia that will get filled out with shops. We’ll make it deeper for tables and chairs, and people can sit out there and eat but they’ll be covered from the rain.' It wound up being filled with bike racks instead." When it came time to renovate the building, "We said, 'You should just fill that in with glass, either for a larger tenant or let the office space interior come up to the edge.' Today’s glassy buildings you see the energy inside, and that adds to the life on the street. Now at the pedestrian level, the experience is held away."

One of the Portland Building's other shortcomings has always been that its entrance is on Fifth Avenue instead of on Fourth facing the South Park Blocks. Burke was able to shed some light. "You would think the building would want to open itself up to the park," he said. "I spoke to Lisa Lee [a project manager for Graves on the Portland Building]. Why did you put the parking entry facing the park? Why not put program against that? She said, 'I know. The slope dictated everything. We hated putting it there, but so be it.' So when I talked to DLR, I said there was not a design intent with the entrance. It’s unfortunate the parking was there [along the park]. If you could get rid of it, I’d do it and make it more glassy." Which is precisely what the renovation does. "Later on," Burke adds, "I was blown away to find people fighting about the historical intent, as if they don’t see removing parking and putting windows on the park as a positive thing. That one I don’t get."

I then asked Burke about the Portland Building potentially losing its National Register listing. Normally for a landmark building such a removal would be the biggest sign that a renovation was taking an improper approach. "Some of the commissioners were wrestling with that same question," he said of the Landmarks Commission hearings. "One commissioner was trying to look at it from a legal perspective. She was anxious about whether these renovations would force the building into a position of being de-listed. She wanted to keep it on the National Register. Then there was a conversation: 'Do we care?'"

"I said, 'My answer’s from a different perspective. I’m an architect and we faced issues many time with a historic landmark. It’s complicated. What you’d love to have is both the responsibility and the right to modernize a building: to make it better, particularly when it’s still being used. You have an obligation to the users. Monticello, I would think you should forever be restoring it for what it is. But I have no problem with a train station on a landmark list [that's] no longer being used as a train station be changed. I think you should let the buildings live. Michael was asked that question many times. He said, 'Do it. I’d rather see my buildings get updated than be out of date and out of step.' Being on the Register can handcuff you when you’re an active user. But I’m not being brash about it. It’s great that we can come up with mechanisms for saving history. Penn Station was torn down for a crummy train station. That got the preservation movement started. I just think sometimes it’s taken a bit too literally."

We then talked about intent with regard to the facade. "Where the weaknesses are [in the cladding] it’s getting worse and worse," Burke said. "What you’re fixing is something slowly falling apart. There was no [original] material intent. Michael wanted to do a glazed terracotta tile. He found this company in California. They worked up a price. Michael was so excited about it. He thought it was going to be this sparkly building in a rainy climate. Then the contractors told Michael it wasn't going to happen because of budget. So he said, 'We’ll use stucco.' The City of Portland pushed back on some things. They had to go back and do a second round. They didn’t want to accept stucco. They said, 'We don’t want a building we’ll have to repair every five to seven years. Michael said, 'What can I use that’s cheaper than stucco?' They came back. On a Sunday morning they called Michael with an idea. It’s a famous meeting in the history of the project. They said, 'We’ve got a way to use the façade as part of the structural system.' We can paint it. Michael said, 'I don’t care if we make it out of oatmeal.' He hadn’t executed anything at this scale. The way to win the competition was to be within budget."

Design-competition model of Portland Building (Dezeen)

One of the small changes being made at the ground-floor level in the Portland Building renovation is illustrative of the larger debate, perhaps. The tiles are being switched out for tiles twice as large. Unlike with the facade over-cladding or even the window tinting, there isn't an argument to be made that changing tiles is functionally or physically better. It's just an aesthetic change. But again, it's one that may get closer to the original in terms of intent.

At the time of construction, "Michael said, 'Can I use some tile?' They only let him use it at the base," Burke recalls. "And they reduced the size of the tile to the cheapest size possible. The historic people today are nuts about the size of the tile. It was a smaller tile than we wanted. It’s got lots of grout joints. We liked the bigger surface of the new tile." He also says it addresses a problem with the grout. "We’ve always done this: we pick grout colors that come as close as possible to matching the tile," Burke added. "In one of the re-grouts, they re-grouted it with black grout. They thought it was something we did originally. I said, 'No, no, no."

"Michael’s intent was shapes, colors. In truth, Michael loved working with nice materials when we had higher budgets. But he was also very quick to what he needed to do to be within budgets, and he didn’t usually fight material changes. Michael would have been open to talking about other materials. The question is what’s more important here: Michael’s intent or the way he’d treat the design versus an obedient replication of what was there? If you’re going to restore it, what is a responsible restoration?"

Ultimately Burke has become one of the biggest champions of the DLR Group and City of Portland approach. "I think they were incredibly responsible in trying to really think through the issues and come up with the best solutions," he says. "I think they did a very good job, and a tough job."

The Portland Building's restoration, including all of these changes, was approved by City Council earlier this month.

 

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Witnessing the tragic United Workmen Temple demolition

Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple demolition (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

When doctors take the Hippocratic oath, they pledge to "first, do no harm," or as it literally translates from Latin, noxamvero et maleficium propulsabo: "I will utterly reject harm and mischief."

Apparently property developers undergo no such oath.

That notion of rejecting harmful acts came to mind yesterday morning as I paid what will likely be my final respects to the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple, the Richardsonian Romanesque-style historic building that has stood downtown at 914 SW Second Avenue since 1892. A few days ago, demolition crews began their job of tearing apart the building as it reaches its 125th anniversary.

The demolition is being spearheaded by Onder Development and Arthur Mutal, in order to make way for an office building. These developers are also demolishing the historic Hotel Albion (best known as home of the Lotus Cafe) on the same block to make way for a 20-story hotel. Both buildings would be designed by Ankrom Moisan Architects and built by Turner Construction. And the new buildings actually look pretty decent in the renderings, I must say. Too bad they'll arguably be tainted by what they trampled.

Despite my frustration and despite feeling appalled, I don't think it would be helpful to vilify the developers or anyone else. Arthur Mutal, for example, is involved in some historic rehabilitation projects around town such as the Cornelius Hotel. When I interviewed Arthur Mutal's Jeff Arthur and architects from Ankrom Moisan in December 2015, they both expressed reluctance to be part of the demolition and had valid reasons why their hands were tied.

"With the reality of the block size," Ankrom's Carolyn Forsyth said, referring to the possibility of a rehab into office space that they explored, "once you get a core in there that has all the stuff a highrise core needs to have, the plate left over is not something a modern office tenant would be fit to use."

"I’m a native Portlander and have been doing a lot of adaptive reuse and some historical reuse for about 10 years," Arthur said. "Whenever possible I like to keep older buildings intact and bring out their character. When we looked at that block, that was the goal and intent." 

"We haven’t made any final decision about anything. We’re still exploring options," Arthur told me that December day. "As we’ve gone through this we’ve realized the challenges are greater than we thought."

The fact that Portland is also now anticipating a major earthquake is also part of the story. To properly stabilize seismically an unreinforced building this size is not cheap.

What's more, Portland's and Oregon's surprisingly lacking historic preservation laws and incentives figure in here too. If there were state, county and city-level historic tax credits for renovations, it might have helped the developers get closer to feeling such an approach would "pencil out," as the saying goes.

The scene of the crime (Brian Libby)

Having considered all those mitigating factors—the size of the floor plates on a half-block building, the cost of seismic retrofitting, the lack of sufficient incentives—am I in a mood to accept or forgive the developers for what they're doing?

Not. At. All.

As far as I'm concerned, Onder and Arthur Mutal's actions amount to a kind of one-block Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. It's not a natural disaster, but make no mistake: it's a disaster. Restore Oregon has called this the most historically-significant demolition to happen in Portland in decades, and they're not wrong.

I've always found "pencil out" to be a conveniently vague phrase. After all, any building owner or developer could come up with a different answer to the question of what point the cost of a building's construction or renovation outweighs the potential profit they stand to make.

In the case of the office building that will be located on the United Workmen Temple site, maybe it's true that with seismic stabilization the leftover space on each floor would be smaller than what's sought for the most lucrative-to-lease Class A office space. At the same time, a quick glance at the many old warehouses in the Central Eastside and to a lesser extent Slabtown being renovated for creative companies would seem to indicate that many potential renters or buyers of office space are precisely looking for old buildings, with the brick walls and wood beams that speak to the continuity of the generations and give off an authentic ambiance and texture that is very rarely found in new construction.

I think of projects like the Brewery Blocks in the Pearl District, which 15 years ago replaced the former Blitz-Weinhard brewery with mixed-use, LEED-rated office and condo buildings, as well as renovating what became the Wieden + Kennedy building. I'm sure it wasn't cheap to preserve the old brewhouse and its smokestack like developer Gerding Edlen did. But you know what? I feel pretty confident those guys have made a lot of dough without losing sleep at night. I can think of any number of similar cases around town: the Ford Building, the Leftbank Building, the US Custom House, the Olympic Mills Commerce Center. Even if one were to argue those renovations were cheaper than the United Workmen Temple renovation and seismic upgrade would have been, those developers all added something positive to the city's fabric. They not only did no harm, but they actively did something good. And they still each made a profit.

As I saw first-hand this morning as well as in a stream of social media posts from those documenting the Temple's demolition, it is unequivocally too late to save this building. So where do we go from here?

For starters, we absolutely have to find a way to change the math and change the system. It is preposterous that we haven't updated the city's historic building inventory since the 1980s. It's a slap in the face to our citizenry and our shared history that building owners can de-list their historic properties. We need both more carrots and more sticks: more financial incentives to do the right thing, and more penalties for not doing the right thing—for the Onders of the world.

We must also not forget. For all I know both developers will go on from here to do good things. I mentioned Arthur Mutal's involvement in other historic renovations, for example, and that's laudable. At the same time, I wonder if a kind of unofficial Scarlet Letter is in order here. Anyone have a sewing kit?

This isn't character assassination. I'm inclined to believe these developers are upstanding Portlanders trying to make an honest living and, aside from this demo, are decent people. But they did perpetrate one of the most unfortunate demolitions the city has seen in decades. There will be no penalty for that. They will presumably find constructing an office and hotel on this site in booming downtown Portland to be quite lucrative, enough to laugh off some hotheaded writer or the historic-preservation nonprofits calling foul. And no one is really trying to stop that. But we do have the power to do some small but important things: to remember, to remind others of what was done here and who did it, and to try harder to build consensus big enough to overcome those who would oppose proper incentives for historic preservation at the city, county, state or federal level.

The long, yellow arm of the profit motive (Brian Libby)

It may get worse before it gets better.  Our knuckle-dragger-in-chief occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue could easily do away with federal historic tax credits altogether despite their bipartisan support, perhaps to cut taxes for KKK members, to fund the rounding up of immigrants and journalists, or to literally go nuclear when some country won't build a Trump hotel on the site of a children's hospital. But whether it's the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple or our ongoing national crisis, I'm trying to remind myself of the need to, as Jesse Jackson once implored, "keep hope alive." And to keep fighting.

Every city is continuously a work in progress, with construction cranes and demolition wrecking balls never out of service. And for the most part, that's the natural way of things. One era or generation or century's architecture is not always suitable for the needs of the next. Most buildings, moreover, are not so remarkable and historically significant that they must always be preserved in perpetuity.

Yet great cities preserve and protect their most significant architectural contributions through the decades, and cities are, of course, always made up of people like you and me who collectively determine, block by block and building by building, what will stay and what will go. Of course those decisions usually get made not just in terms of what is best for the city, but what might serve current needs, be they the need for profit or to serve the public. And sometimes we get car crashes like the Workmen Temple demolition, where that historic architecture is decayed and in need of some expensive TLC, with not enough incentives to take the dangerously sharp edge off the profit motive. There will always be casualties—buildings demolished that should be. But there will always be you and me and our neighbors, the people without dollar signs as our guiding light and without our integrity potentially eclipsed by said cash. Jesse's right that we have to keep hope alive. But we also have to do something beyond just motivation: we have to keep fighting. That's the only way a tragic day for local architecture like today will not have been without an eventual bright side.

 

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Portland Building 2.0: city takes bold, non-historic approach restoring Graves-designed landmark

Rendering of Portland Building restoration (DLR Group)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The conventional approach to restoring landmark works of historic architecture is to rehab what's there and not make any radical changes with materials or the design experience. But the Portland Building has never been a typical work of historic architecture.

Completed in 1982, the building was the first major work of postmodern architectural style in the United States. Some were dazzled by the design, while others were aghast. Though the building was unmistakably striking, adding color and whimsy to the skyline like a work of Pop Art sculpture on a city-block scale, it was a compromised and arguably faulty work of construction from the beginning: overly cheap and not built to last, with unacceptably low levels of natural light that have made it a dreary place to work. Today, it leaks whenever it rains.

Now, a design team led by Portland's DLR Group is overseeing a Portland Building renovation that will seemingly make it a much better building experience on the inside. What had been an oppressively dark lobby almost totally lacking in natural illumination will be, thanks to the closing of ground-floor retail spaces on the perimeter, now full of sunlight. On the Fourth Avenue side facing the park, underground parking will be removed and the entrance glassed in, giving occupants a view of the greenspace. Upstairs, black glass will be made clear, substantially improving natural light levels.

Because of the changes in glass, the restored Portland Building will look noticeably different from outside. Yet it's another change to the exterior that may represent the biggest change of all: the painted concrete façade will be covered with a new metal cladding that's part of a new rainscreen system. The late Michael Graves's firm has pledged its support for the change, and outside façade consultants have affirmed the soundness of the approach. But the move will so alter the appearance of the architecture that there is talk that the Portland Building will lose its National Register listing.

This is a complex and unique restoration project, and the architects understand the building's needs far more than a layperson like me. Normally if I hear a famous historic building may be altered to a degree that it would lose its National Register listing, the phrase "full stop" comes to mind. The whole reason we have National Register listings is to guide us as to what's appropriate and inappropriate. The local DoCoMoMo chapter, devoted to preserving midcentury-modern architecture, has already voiced its opposition. But again, the Portland Building is a unique case. What's the right course of action? I honestly don't know.

The Portland Building in 2014 (Brian Libby)

To learn more about the restoration, recently I sat down with DLR Group principal Carla Weinheimer as well as Kristin Wells, construction manager for the City of Portland.

"It’s an opportunity to re-think the workplace for city employees," Weinheimer said as we began our conversation. "It’s part of the city’s history. It’s part of the story of the city. This is more than just fixing a building. There’s something important about doing this right."

Wells then began an explanation of how leakage was a major factor driving the approach to the renovation. "It’s always had water intrusion issues," she said of the Portland Building. "There have been a series of studies over the years trying to fix it with a systematic approach. The city hired a firm to do an independent study to ask, ‘How do we really fix the envelope?’ That study triggered the conversation: ‘If we’re going to holistically redo our envelope, and we have goals to seismically improve our buildings, what would it take to improve the seismic stability?’ Then it was at a price point that made us say, ‘What else should we be considering?’ That brought MEP [mechanical, electrical and plumbing]. At that point, it brought up, ‘How do we redo the interior?’ The visioning was an opportunity that presented itself. But originally the question was, ‘How do you preserve this as a long-term building that lasts in to the future from a building function perspective? How do we do business and want to work as a city? How do we serve our constituents?’ It brought up all this stuff that it wasn’t really about, but created an opportunity."

Weinheimer confirmed that responding to water-intrusion issues was "the number one criteria of the project. This better not leak ever again. So there is a solution that addresses that fundamental issue. Second, we need more light coming into this building. You’re seeing no more black glass. You have a pattern all the way up that is punched windows but is actually spandrel glass with wall behind it, including the stripes up there. Now everywhere you see glass on the outside will be clear glass."

One of the small new details on the project is the use of a new glazed terracotta tile at the base of the building that is about twice the size of the original tiles. But this has been done with the approval of Michael Graves's office. "The overall effect is aesthetically actually an improvement," the architect said. "It’s brought back some of the finesse."

Regarding the façade, Weinheimer argued that fixing the existing system was not viable. "It’s really in a shape that is not healthy," she said. "We spent many hours with Michael Lewis, our façade consultant, hashing it out: 'What is it we’re dealing with?' Cast concrete on a high-rise building on the exterior is unusual. And the intent was never to have a painted concrete façade. Originally it was to have terracotta panels on the whole building. But it didn't happen for budgetary reasons. This was the solution where Graves said, ‘I got my building.’ He got the surface color he wanted. But tile attached to concrete is not considered a viable façade today. What we did is take it a step further and say, ‘It really needs to be for the entire building.’ It’s not the cheapest way to do this project, but it is the right way to be the project."

Weinheimer and Wells also explained that the change to a rain-screen system behind the tile-clad portions of the façade amounted to a shift in the plane of the exterior that would have made retaining the painted concrete exterior out of whack with the rest. "The tile absolutely had to go to rain screen," she said. "Nobody felt comfortable adhering tile to a structural concrete façade. I don’t think it’s allowed by code now. It’s a system you don’t want to replicate. Now that means your tile is set out from the existing concrete. With concrete your first thought is I’ll replicate it with precast. But your building can’t support that. And it would force an even deeper rain screen solution. That meant the best option is to switch to metal panel to replicate the paint on the concrete."

One concern that was expressed to me by someone opposed to this restoration (on the grounds that it changes the original too much) was that the over-cladding will create a wider gap between the inside spaces and the edge of the windows: more of a tunnel effect. But Weinheimer believes this will prove not to matter much. "It's less true than you would think," she said. "Right now the sandwich is the skin, an air space, an interior wall, and the insulation attached to the back of the concrete. But if we peel back that inside layer and expose the concrete…the depth may increase a little bit at the windows but not very much because we’re actually replicating the joints, the size of the joints. Everything is going to be the same size."

The biggest aesthetic difference, Weinheimer said, will be not the metal over-cladding but the change from nearly black tinted windows to clear ones. "A gentleman at the AIA talk said, ‘Certainly Graves must have intended those windows because it’s so graphically strong.’ But that’s not really the case," she explains. "There was a real disappointment on the part of the Graves team when they saw the black glass. But that whole concept does make it very graphic."

"This building is about public service," Weinheimer added. "The public should have a good experience. It was fundamental that we needed to get as much daylight into this building as we could."

Renderings of new glass-walled portions of the ground floor (DLR Group)

That will be felt most noticeably on the first two floors. On the ground floor, the retail storefronts along the perimeter will be taken out so the spaces become part of a larger lobby. The second-floor mechanical equipment will be moved to the roof, which will free up that floor not only for extra space but create more of an atrium that brings light into the first-floor lobby.

"The original concept was that the storefronts would be urban design-friendly, but it never worked well," Weinheimer said. Now the front part of the building is about engagement with public. That is about transparency. It’s that sense that you’re welcome here because we want to help you. And you’ll see how wonderful that second floor becomes, with these windows all around the perimeter."

Similarly, removing the underground parking garage will not only allow a new fitness center, but will also create a glassed-in view onto the Park Blocks. "That loading dock is not functioning properly. It never did. It was not the highest and best use. It’s too steep of an angle for trucks," the architect explained. "So we’ve got a nice big opening. Our recommendation is the dock be closed to remedy a deficiency in the urban design. That’s something we were asked by Landmarks to do. There was an understanding that there was an openness. The composition really settles that façade. We just felt like that was the final piece."

"It’s pretty darn exciting to be part of remedying all of the problems: the urban design, the light issues. It brings up the building to what it needs to be."

Not everyone is sold on this bold, perhaps even aggressive approach to transforming the Portland Building. The Oregon chapter of DoCoMoMo, the national organization devoted to preserving 20th century modern architecture, explains on its website that while the organization "supports much of what is being proposed," they have a series of concerns: that (1) the new metal cladding "will alter the proportions of the building and has a fundamentally different material quality," that (2) the new terracotta tiles being twice as large as the original, that (3) infill at the parking entry and loggias "obscure the original composition of the building," how (4) the mechanical equipment will be "highly visible," and (5) that there could be a "potential loss of significant interior spaces."

Rendering of the restored Portland Building at night (DLR Group)

Thinking about it all, I personally remain on the fence. It does seem like the City of Portland could have pursued an approach where the existing facade is repaired and that would have stopped the leaking for several years. But clearly they felt like the leaking had to be stopped more permanently. I suspect the metal cladding will indeed give the building an unmistakably different look, and I'm not sure that's a good thing for such an internationally recognized and historic work of architecture. The fact that the Portland Building could lose its National Register listing, see its design rejected by the Landmarks Commission and only gain approval via City Council election is concerning. At the same time, in general I'd like to see more hybrid solutions for historic buildings, where one gets a true sense of how the building has evolved and changed over time. And if ever there were a historic building for which a more radical approach could be justified, it's the Portland Building. I guess the proof will come in the finished product.

If there's an over-riding concern I have about the Portland Building rehab, it's cost. It will cost something like $200 million to transform this city office building when you factor in the year-long relocation of employees. I can't help but wonder if the City of Portland might have been better off selling the building to a private-sector entity on the condition that the facade be maintained, then building a new building somewhere else. After all, $200 million is exponentially larger an amount than we'll ever see the City spend on some other worthy historic-preservation projects that fall under public ownership.

All that said, when the new Portland Building is unveiled in a few years, it will be quite exciting to behold from an interior architectural perspective. I'm anxious to step into that heretofore oppressively dark and windowless lobby and experience it full of light. I look forward to the building not turning its back to the Park Blocks so much with that parking-garage entrance; now there will be a wall of glass, better connecting occupants with the park. Portland has an impressive history of architectural firsts, be it Pietro Belluschi's Equitable Building as a pioneering post-WWII glass curtain-walled office building, the upcoming Framework building by Lever Architecture as the first mass-timber highrise in the United States, or even the Portland Building itself as a first work of postmodern civic architecture. Maybe the rehab itself can become a pioneering blend of historic landmark and new architectural ideas.

 

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Randy Gragg discusses the Portland Art Museum's John Yeon retrospective, "Quest for Beauty"

John Yeon, 1977 (John Hinchcliff)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The new Portland Art Museum exhibit devoted to the life and career of John Yeon is a revelation. Seeing the totality of this Renaissance man's life blended together in one space — the architecture for sure, but also the activism that helped save and spotlight some of our area's greatest natural wonders, as well as his superlative art collection featuring a breadth of Asian and European art and antiquities — brings Yeon alive in a compelling, showstopping way.

The exhibit begins in a double-height space within the museum's original Belluschi Building, and the space is dominated by two things: a massive and beautiful new wood architectural model of Yeon's masterpiece, the Watzek House (including the entire hillside on which it sits), as well as a multi-story photo mural of Chapman Point on the Oregon Coast just north of Cannon Beach, which a young John Yeon saved from development (it's now known as Ecola State Park) by cashing in his life-insurance policy and buying.

Here and throughout the exhibit are also a series of rare sculptures and antiquities from Japan, Korea, India and Italy, but really for me the ultimate message of the exhibit came through the juxtaposition of the Watzek model and the Chapman Point mural: that John Yeon loved framing beautiful landscaped settings, sometimes with architecture as the focal point and sometimes not, but never without a sense of the topography and its potential to engender a sense of awe.

As one moves through "Quest for Beauty" this same type of juxtaposition happens throughout, with models and drawings and photos of Yeon's additional houses and a public building or two interspersed with the art he collected and representations of the landscapes he helped save, none more stunning than The Shire, a swatch of Columbia River-side property on the Washington side, immediately across from Multnomah Falls, that Yeon arranged into a breathtaking pastoral, nearly-wild yet park-like setting (while also saving from development).

A model of the Watzek House in "Quest for Beauty" (Brian Libby)

As if the narrative and visuals of Yeon's life so artfully presented weren't enough to be excited about, the museum and its collaborators also endeavored to tie the designer's life to the present day. So Portland State University's Center for Public Interest Design has an installation beside the Yeon exhibit that adapts plywood, which Yeon famously took advantage of after World War II to design and see built a number of quite-affordable starter homes (costing less than $60,000 in 2017 dollars, adjusted for inflation), to the CPID's current homeless housing exercise. And Lever Architecture, which collaborated with Randy Gragg, Superfab and others in creating the Yeon exhibit itself (included custom display pieces), also has an architectural installation in the courtyard demonstrating how plywood can actually be sandwiched into the most basic structural building blocks: how we can build whole buildings from it.

The exhibit opens this Saturday, May 13, and as a primer, I talked with exhibit curator Randy Gragg about the multi-year effort to create and bring to life "Quest for Beauty" along with the equally-ambitious two books on Yeon's architecture and landscape careers, respectively. (I've perused both and they're spectacular, featuring not only a trove of images but a variety of thought-provoking essays.) Meanwhile, the Q&A with Randy:

Portland Architecture: Do you recall when you first started to become aware of Yeon and his work? I wonder if he was someone whose work you became enamored with right away after starting to write about architecture and art in Portland, or if, because his built portfolio and international notoriety are smaller than Belluschi's, it took more time for you (as it probably did for me) to fully realize his blend of architectural talents, civic passion and keen eye for beauty.

Randy Gragg: I’ve long been interested in a certain idea of landscape and “local identity,” going back to my budding days as a writer in Nevada. I moved to Seattle and started a magazine in Seattle that expanded to the Northwest—a kind of Cascadia idea. When I came to Portland in 1989, one of the first books I read was “Space Style and Structure”—to this day, the best study of architecture and landscape in the Northwest. I saw that famous picture of the Watzek House’s rooflines, Mount Hood rising behind. My first week here working for The Oregonian, I wound up in semester-end crits at the now-long-defunct Oregon School of Design and met Rick Potestio, John Cava, and Bill Tripp who were all citing Yeon as important.

I was writing mostly on art in those days, so I didn’t hunt Yeon down. Then one day, Richard Louis Brown—Yeon’s life partner—called me and asked if I’d like to meet John. He had, as Richard put it, “designed” a Portland Art Museum exhibit of Asian objects within the “Portland Collects” exhibition showcasing local collections. It was all John’s things: fifteenth-century screens after the Japanese master Sesshu Toyo; a pair of twelfth-century lacquer sake bottles; a Ming painting table; a sixteenth-century Negoro lacquer water ewe. He was around 82 and very frail with sunken cheeks and a gravely whisper for a voice, but glittering blue eyes and a wry smile. I barely knew anything about Asian art—and still don’t—but I know exquisite when I see it. The display was also witty with little juxtapositions like a Ming cloisonné incense burner in the form of a duck in conversation with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japanese ceramics decorated with ducks. It sounds effete, and it was, but it was also funny—like watching two artists from different eras and styles enjoying the same joke.

Subsequently, he and Richard invited me to the Watzek House and out to The Shire, his 78-acre landscape in the Columbia Gorge. I knew so little about architecture or landscape at that time, looking back. (Now, at least I know what I don’t know.) I don’t think I had anything but shallow questions. But I was blown away.

I wrote about and visited a lot of Belluschi houses and churches in those days, too. His early work is incredible. But then I went off to Columbia University on a fellowship and culled the Avery library for material on the Pacific Northwest and discovered just how important Yeon was. His historic reputation had faded. So I took him up as a kind of cause. Unfortunately, he died while I was away.

Yeon's Shaw House (Portland Art Museum)

I've always been interested in 20th century architects (like Yeon and Belluschi) who ultimately became modernists but who resisted the Bauhaus idea that modern architecture must make a clean break from historical references. This seems to of course be the case with Yeon. How might you characterize what Yeon took with him from architects like A.E. Doyle and Herman Brookman? Is it about detail and craftsmanship?

I don’t think John got much from Doyle, other than whatever of Doyle is in the Wentz Cottage at Neahkahnie. That’s the 1916 cabin on a high overlook of the ocean and mountain that the painter Harry Wentz built with Doyle as the architect. Wentz was head of the Portland Art Museum School. Yeon and Belluschi visited and drew with him there. The cottage is basically the “Rosetta Stone” of Northwest regional architecture. Yeon described it as “the first really beautiful piece of architecture, at least in Oregon, that I had experienced.” But nothing Doyle did before or after is anything like it. Yeon interned with Doyle, but thought of him as a kind of merchant architect.

Brookman, on the other hand, he called ““my first exposure to the real thing.” He interned two summers with him, roughly aligning to when he was designing Menucha, Julius Meier’s retreat in the Gorge, and Temple Beth Israel. Brookman drew beautifully and designed every detail of his houses. He was basically a one-man show who teamed with other as he needed the. John liked to say he got architectural education in Brookman’s library. (Yeon was never formally trained or registered as an architect.) In a speech, John described his attraction to Brookman’s work: “I liked its Romantic nature, inventive surprises of form and details, its use of crafts and unusual materials, its magical evocation of long ago and far away.”

There is a richness to Brookman’s work, a deep love for history. Plus, he had aesthetes as patrons: Aaron Frank for the Fir Acres (now the heart of Lewis & Clark) and for the Temple. Doyle got a little bit of that kind of cultured money for Reed College. But you read his letters and he’s often bitching about budget. As they say, an architect is only as good as the money behind him. Brookman found the clients.

John Yeon, 1941 (Portland Art Museum)

I seem to recall that you got to know Yeon before his death in 1994. Could you talk a little bit about the impression you got of him in person, and how his temperament struck you?

I got a far better sense of John through his writing. When I came back from Columbia, I spent a lot of time in his archive. He was a conservation and civic advocate of a high order, and was constantly writing letters and testimony. He was an elegant writer—or I should say, an elegant read. He struggled through draft after draft—the first one scrawled and, then, one after another, all typed. And, there I found a kindred spirit. I’m an obsessive re-writer. So was he.

This is really where I grasped the scope of his vision and pursuits, his intelligence, obsessiveness, eloquence, impatience, and humor. From his early twenties on, he was fearless and eloquent, a purist and sometimes a little bit of a jerk. He got distracted with things he shouldn’t have. But as Nancy Russell once put it to me, John was “a star up in the sky, a pure point of view.”

Obviously Yeon's national profile rose quickly after the completion of the Watzek House in 1937 and its inclusion in MoMA's “Art In Our Time” in 1939, but what's your sense of how aware people in the greater architecture community beyond Portland—historians, journalists, academics—are of his work?

An older generation of architects and historians know of him. But Yeon more or less dropped out of architecture by the mid-1950s. He turned his attention to art collecting, gallery design, and his conservation and activist pursuits. In 1956, he wins the second National Arts & Letters Bruner Award (shared later winners like Richard Meier, Frank Gehry, and many others—distinct for its focus on “beauty.” But he really doesn’t do architecture after that. He didn’t really promote himself. Thus he kind of faded from view. When I came back from New York in ’95, I started finding ways to reknit him into local history. And when notable historians, critics and architects came to town, I often took them up to The Watzek House and, sometimes, The Shire. I recall touring Michael Sorkin around for something he was writing about the urban growth boundary. We were out in the burbs on the edge. He was getting grumpier and grumpier. So I took him to the Watzek House. It was though he smoked a joint: pure joy. Right after he won the Pritzker, Glenn Murcutt was in town for some eco-conference. I kind of kidnapped him and took him to both Watzek House and Jorgensen. He gave me the tour. Watching him discover Yeon was one of the more rewarding architectural experiences I’ve had. “Everything I’ve ever tried to do,” he said, “is here.”

Watzek House courtyard (Portland Art Museum)

I'm curious about the idea that on one hand Yeon was a crucial preservationist with regard to natural wonders, but he also had no qualms about the idea of orchestrating the landscape. Could you talk a little bit about how for Yeon that wasn't a contradiction?

Yeon was a parks advocate and a conservationist, not really a preservationist—at least as we apply the term now. He was deeply influenced by picturesque ideas, both in the European tradition, but even more in the Chinese tradition of captured views. He talked about Chinese scrolls that charted a river’s source to the ocean in the journey of unrolling it. That’s how he wrote about landscapes: in journeys and pictures. As a builder, he once said, “I suppose my attitude towards building in landscapes was, and is, that of a landscape painter imagining what would look good in his landscape painting.”

The people we call “preservationists” today also paint their pictures, just with things like woody debris. There is little in the way of “untouched” landscape to be had. I wish we could blend Yeon’s outlook with today’s preservationists’.

I know this can only be speculation, but what might Yeon make of Portland today? What issues—like architectural/ecological preservation, or density and affordability issues—might drive him to take some kind of stand?

I’m always dubious about that kind of speculation. But let me outline what maybe was Yeon’s biggest impact on Portland. In the mid-‘70s when Harbor Drive was being taken out, Robert Royston was designing Waterfront Park to look like what Yeon called a “miniature golf course.” He wrote this treatise about park design where he argued for a formal park, a simple line of trees that would grow into a “great arboreal hedge” that would stand as “a powerful binding and unifying element in the harbor façade of the city.” Apparently Mayor Neil Goldschmidt read it, and took it to heart. Unfortunately, this grander vision been eroded over time by various memorials and such. The park probably needs to be a different set of gestures now. But I think we can safely say that nobody is thinking about the city at that scale these days.

"Quest for Beauty" at the Portland Art Museum (Brian Libby)

Obviously the Watzek House is a masterwork, but what might be some of your most favorite of his other houses, and why?

They all have their individual merits. We’ll actually being doing a very limited tour of 5 of his houses in June. But I think the other masterwork is the Jorgensen House. It was one of his plywood houses, the first use of the material as an exterior cladding. He organized the entry procession and the plan to preserve some big trees. Yeon obsessed over creating elegant roof forms. Jorgensen is one of his best. Like the Watzek House, Yeon bought it. He lived and worked there the rest of his life. The color—so-called “Yeon blue”—has been carefully matched over the years. Watzek was built for $78,000. Jorgensen for a little over $7,000. If I got to pick one to actually live in, Jorgensen would get my nod.

You've had the opportunity to host a variety of events as head of the Yeon Center. Could you talk a little bit about watching people encounter the architecture there? What moves or surprises people the most?

It’s really interesting. People who really enjoy making things bond with it most immediately and most deeply. Sure, there are the architects, and there is a conceptual dimension to the house. But Yeon paid so much attention to the details that the idiosyncrasies are what true makers of all kinds—weavers, furniture makers, and the like, and some architects—start to home in on. For instance, I’m always interested in whether a visitor notices one particular corner detail in the ceiling of Watzek’s bedroom. It’s unexpected, but a sign of someone thinking, like the break in a pattern you see in a really great Turkish rug. The other day, I dared a group to find a knot in all of the incredible old-growth fir that shapes the house, inside and out. One person did: in one of the few pieces of wood that has been replaced.

But mostly, people almost always seem to find a kind of peace in the beauty and care with which is was created. You can see it on their faces like a spot of sun growing through the clouds.

You and your collaborators have done a wonderful thing bringing Yeon into the public eye with this book, the PAM exhibit, and the opening of the Shire and Watzek to occasional public tours. Is there a next step in that journey, or have we reached the end of that effort?

You would need to ask the University of Oregon’s School of Arch . . . er, sorry, the College of Design. My role with properties will return to being “friend” at the end of the exhibit.

Portland Oregon Visitors Center (Portland Art Museum)

Are there any particular architects working in Portland today in whose architecture you particularly see a Yeon influence?

Hmmmm, influence would mean having had an engagement with his work. It’s really interesting how few local architects have had that. Rick Potestio, Bill Tripp, and John Cava all have done deep dives on Yeon. But there are so many architects I know who have never seen it or only did after I started working for UO.

Historically, it was not easy, as Yeon didn’t promote himself. Potestio tells a hilarious story of marching up to the Watzek house and talking to a guy frumpily dressed with a straw hat working in the garden. Rick kept trying to talk his way in and the guy resisted. Rick being Rick, kept at it talking in great detail about his architectural discoveries on a recent trip to Europe. Finally, the gardener relents: “Oh all right, I’m John Yeon and you can come in.”

You need to be a bit of a seeker to be influenced by John Yeon.

You've spent a lot of time writing not only about John Yeon but also Lawrence Halprin. Is there a connecting thread or commonality that you see in the two designers, beyond their each having contributed landmarks to the city?

That’s a hard question and ultimately a very personal one. Larry and John were such different characters and designers. John Cava once described me—I forget the exact wording, but it a finely tuned brush off—as someone with a sociological interest in the built environment but with fondness for architecture. Now that I’m older, I’ll own it. I’m very interested in convergences of talent, money, opportunity, but most of all, spirit. With Yeon and Halprin (more specifically, his work in Portland), what turned fondness to love and commitment is the spirit: they gave the local a timelessness.

 

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Minor White's Portland: Val Ballestrem discusses a legendary photographer's record of the city

Minor White, "Knapp House, Exterior/Tower," 1942 [negative]; 1995 [print]
(Portland Art Museum, Museum Purchase: Exhibition Budget Fund, 1995)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Although Portland is enjoying a kind of moment these days as a cultural hotspot, attracting musicians and filmmakers and chefs, for much of the city's history there have been few famous names born and raised here. Matt Groening, anyone? Doc Severinsen? Tonya Harding?

Yet there are a few examples of great minds being nurtured by the city for a few years before moving on to greater notoriety. Mark Rothko attended high school locally, for example, after emigrating from the Soviet Union and before heading to New York City, where he would go on to become one of the top two or three American painters of the 20th century. Steve Jobs spent time attending Reed College, where he took a very influential calligraphy class, of all things, that impacted his thinking about computer fonts and other aesthetics. Clark Gable took up acting in Portland during the 1920s before heading to Hollywood and becoming a star.

The legendary American photographer Minor White, whose work is the subject of a new show opening this Friday (March 3) at the Architectural Heritage Center, "Parting Shots: Minor White's Images of Portland, 1938-42," is another example. Born and raised in Minneapolis, he came to Portland at the age of 29 in 1937. His intent had been to move to Seattle, but after stopping off first in Portland, decided to stay. Living at the YMCA for a little over two years, he began to explore photography seriously for the first time. He soon joined the Oregon Camera Club and within a year was offered a job in 1938 as photographer for the Oregon Art Project, which was funded by the Works Progress Administration.

White was tasked by the OAP with photographing historic buildings in downtown Portland before they were demolished for a new riverfront development, which means that many of his photographs of the city are also documents of the historic architecture that would soon be lost. At the same time, White worked for the Portland Civic Theater, documenting its plays and casts. White would leave Portland by 1940, when he was hired to teach photography in La Grande. By the time he returned to the city a year later, intending to establish a commercial studio, three of his photographs had already been accepted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for a group exhibit, and in 1942 the Portland Art Museum gave White (as the museum would later do for Rothko) his first solo show.

But then, World War II ended White's time in the Rose City. He was drafted into the US Army and after the war would settle in New York, falling under the influence of Alfred Stieglitz, and later would continue on to San Francisco, where he would be influenced by two other legendary photographers: Ansel Adams, with whom he helped establish American Photography magazine, and Edward Weston, who became a close friend. By that time, White's style had evolved to be more like Weston's, finding abstraction and sensuality in close-up images.

But White's Portland photographs are something different. They are more straightforward and representational, given this was mostly work for hire and White had yet to develop his artistic identity as a photographer. Yet they are also unquestionably beautiful pictures, making adept use of light and shadow to create a sometimes haunting sense of mood. His photo the Dodd Building formerly at Naito and Ankeny, for example, is wistful and moody in its depiction of a lone man standing underneath one of its arches.

Minor White, "Knapp House, Interior Staircase," 1942 [negative]; 1995 [print]
(Portland Art Museum,  Museum Purchase: Exhibition Budget Fund, 1995)

Recently I spoke with Val Ballestrem of the Architectural Heritage Center, who curated the exhibit using photos from the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum and the Oregon Historical Society.

Portland Architecture: How did this exhibit come together?

Ballestrem: We have a volunteer committee that helps with exhibits and collections: sometimes ideas and sometimes installations. A year ago we were talking and somebody suggested, ‘What if we did something related to Minor White?’ Bill Hawkins is on the committee, and he made an inquiry to the art museum to see if they’d be interested in providing photos. And we have artifacts: pieces of the two houses photographed by Minor White in 1942. The next step was the Oregon Historical Society had some photos also. They were equally generous in providing what we needed. They both had quite a few images to look through. I wanted to find as many images as I could where there was an inkling of a building with an artifact we might have associated with it. I did some of that: not as much as I’d hoped but enough to fill our gallery. Then I wanted to think more about White as a photographer. He was early in his career here. People say this is what sort of launched his career. I tried to look for different themes coming out of them. I selected an assortment, basically, from the two organizations, and ended up with 35 photos on display. It was sort of a process, but there was interest from many people in the organization here.

Do you see White as another creative mind who passed through Portland for a relatively short time, like Rothko or Clark Gable?

Definitely. They came here for a while, and started their careers, and went elsewhere and did amazing things. It’s interesting: I read Minor White wasn’t planning on staying here. He was passing through on his way to Seattle from Minneapolis. It’s that sort of story you’ve heard before: got of the bus and sort of liked it and stuck around.

Minor White, "Arches of the Dodd Building (Southwest Front Avenue and Ankeny Street),"
1938 (Portland Art Museum, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Program, Public Buildings Service,
US General Services Administration)

What captivates you about White's pictures?

Most of these photos he’s trying to capture reality on the street, but at certain times a day. Maybe there’s nobody on the street and it’s barren, and maybe that says something about the area. Then you see another picture in the same part of town and there are lots of cars. It’s hard to describe. There’s a mood to the photos. I wouldn’t say he’s being sentimental about it at all. He’s not making things look really pretty. Some of the pictures with the people in them, you see the junk store in the background, or some really gritty part of town. He was capturing that reality of what was going on there.

But I also think there could have been some purpose in that: who was cutting his paycheck. Part of the WPA’s purpose, it was like, 'Make yourself a better artist.' At the same time, he was documenting conditions in a part of town that the powers that be at the time were wanting to wipe out, in a precursor to urban renewal. That’s part of the story that I didn’t know about until I dug into this. Why was he taking these pictures along Front Avenue? I think in part, even if I haven’t completely connected the dots, that the WPA was helping to fund a proposed redevelopment along Front Avenue. His job in some ways was to go take pictures of how lousy it was so they’d support demolishing these buildings. That may be only part of what was going on, but still: I didn’t know the WPA was helping to fund projects in Portland. That’s some of the detail I find most intriguing: the backstory that goes along with the photos. Now I can look at this photo from the Burnside Bridge looking down Front Avenue. He was taking an artistic photo, but he was also capturing conditions that were deemed less than desirable.

And we know that by the mid-20th century much of Portland's riverfront buildings would be gone. White's years in Portland pre-date those years of turning historic buildings into parking lots, but evidently that thinking was already underway in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

When he was there some buildings were already coming down. It really didn’t start to take off until mid-1940. By then he’d gone to La Grande for a year and a half. For the demolition photos you see in the show, I haven’t been able to find out what was going on. But there was clearly a decade or more’s abandonment of those buildings. It was the Great Depression and people didn’t have the funds to fix them up. I think that’s why some of those buildings came down, and why they show up in some of his photos. 

Minor White, "1323-29 Southwest First Avenue," 1939 (Portland Art Museum,
Courtesy of the Fine Arts Program, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General Services Administration)

It strikes me that there is a connection between what White was documenting and what inspired the formation of the AHC's parent organization, the Bosco-Milligan Foundation. White was documenting Portland's historic riverfront architecture about to be lost, and a few decades later it was that broader loss, over the 1940s-60s, that inspired the BMF to begin collecting artifacts from these buildings. And given the growth we're experiencing today, maybe the times are comparable.

It’s definitely been in our minds the whole time developing this exhibit: he was documenting a time on the cusp of or in the beginning of some large changes to the city. Today here we are too with big change going on. We want peole to use this exhibit as a way to think about today. Is there a building I should take a picture of? If I don’t take a photo maybe there won’t be a photo someday. If it’s gone and there’s no documentation of it, it can be completely gone. There are some buildings like that in Minor White's photos where I go, 'I’ve never seen that before.' The Witch Hazel building at the foot of the Hawthorne bridge with its turret: I’m fascinated by it. I think it came down around mid-1940 or somewhere. It’s long forgotten. If it wasn’t for the Minor White photo that shows it clearly, there may not be much record of it.

And with the threat of a large earthquake, now more than ever we should be documenting the city.

Change is going to happen and we know that. We know we can’t save everything. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make a record of it. Take a picture of it. Take several pictures of it. Write a couple paragraphs about it. So when that change does happen, someone in the future could say, “Wow, THAT’s what that block looked like in 2017.” I’ll bet few documented Division Street in the 1990s, for example. Now it’s been completely transformed.

 

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Protecting Oregon's historic buildings just got a little easier

Amity First Baptist Church, Amity, Oregon (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For more than 20 years, most historic buildings in Oregon, particularly those outside Portland, have had virtually no protection. And because we’re one of the only states with owner-consent rules regarding historic designations, we’re one of the worst in the nation for preservation in many ways. But thanks to a rule change that has amended Oregon’s Goal 5 land-use policy and adopted by the Department of Land Conservation and Development—which now basically see historic places as a natural resource worth preserving—there will be an important new baseline of protection for over 11,500 National Register properties in the state, as well as new options for local governments to preserve the historic buildings and neighborhoods.

“The implications are profound,” Restore Oregon executive director Peggy Moretti told me in a phone interview late last week. (Her organization spearheaded lobbying for the change.) “It’s the best thing to happen to historic preservation in Oregon in 20 years.”

The new rules do a few things. First, they specify that for any property listed on the National Register of Historic Places, there must be a demolition review first.

“For folks here in Portland used to hearing about historic districts and hoops they have to jump through, they know we already do impose protections here on individual National Register-listed properties and districts,” explains Morretti. “But for most of the National Register-listed properties in the state, there was virtually no protection. Even in Washington and Clackamas counties there were no minimum protections at all. Demolition delay was all. And delay is not protection. You can just wait out the day. We’re excited there is finally this minimum standard. This change doesn’t prevent demolition but there has to be a public process where they consider the value of what they’re proposing to replace a historic place with against the benefit of retaining that historic place.”

The Goal 5 rule change also makes it easier to create local historic districts that are not National Register-listed districts but still have some kind of designation like “conservation district.” It also removes the biggest roadblock to such initiatives by clarifying that (1) only a simple majority of property owners need to consent to that designation, and (2) that taking an inventory of historic buildings is not a form of designation. This frees cities to update their historic resource inventories without requiring owners to consent.

“We haven’t inventoried our historic resources since the ‘80s because there was an assumption it triggered owner-consent rules,” Moretti added. “Now we know it does not. Taking stock is not the same as designation. So a community can take inventory and it doesn’t require owner consent. Portland can feel comfortable allocating funds to an updated historic-buildings inventory. And that’s important. How many decades of buildings do we have that have reached the age of 50 to become historic but have never been inventories? And it’s the same across the state. This change enables cities to take stock of what their historic assets are and plan for it.”

Also rewritten as part of Goal 5 is an allowance for local jurisdictions to apply additional protections to National Register listed properties or districts, but only after a public process. This gives property owners a role in customizing design guidelines or other regulations for their district.

“I think it was intentionally not defined too tightly,” Moretti said. “Out in rural communities they might approach that differently from Portland, which already has a historic landmarks commission. We’re trying to approach this with flexibility for different communities and jurisdictions so it works for them.”

I asked Moretti what the rule change did not do, or to put it another way, I asked her if a doomed historic building like the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple would be more likely to get saved with this change.

“Unfortunately I don’t think it would have mattered,” she said. “It did not fix the fact that our historic designation process is just broken. This thing we call owner consent, we’re the only state that does that. I think we need to find ways to significantly revise that, because it really gets in the way of fulfilling the mandate to protect historic resources. And ‘protect’ doesn’t mean everything's safe. Buildings like the Workmen Temple or the Governor Building at Second and Stark should not be lost. Those are significant buildings that should not be coming down without significant dialogue. They’re more than private properties. They’re community assets. There should be more of a public process in determining based on objective data whether they’re historic or not, and whether they should receive protection.”

“A property is either historic or not,” she added. “It’s not up to the owner’s whim. What is discretionary is whether it’s protected or not. It either meets the criteria of significance or it doesn’t.”

She characterized the Goal 5 rule change as making lemonade out of lemons, or a step in the right direction. But ultimately, Moretti continued, “There’s lots more work to do. We have an agenda that includes looking at the backwards historic-designation program in Oregon. We need a state historic tax credit. We need more historic designations. There needs to be more ways to incentivize preservation. We need to add density and retain affordability while still retaining our historic fabric: the places that make Portland not look like anywhere else.”

Moretti also sees a danger to Portland’s historic buildings coming from our ever-greater density. “I predict we’re entering a period of more commercial buildings,” she said. “It won’t just be houses. It will be good commercial buildings: the two-story buildings up and down our transportation corridors. There’s a danger they’ll say, ‘we’ve got to go tall.’ That’s a good idea generally speaking, but do we want to lose every bit of those historic Main Street buildings?”

 

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The architecture of history: visiting Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church, newly added to National Register

Stained glass at Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

As I arrived at Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church on a recent weekday morning, the neighborhood seemed full of energy as well as change.

I'd been a few minutes early for a tour of the church, so I popped into get coffee at the busy New Seasons Market two blocks north of the church, on Fremont Street, which is surrounded by new development such as the One North and Radiator office buildings. To the southwest I could see the newish Randall Children's Hospital. Just across Fargo Street, smoke was already wafting from barbecue outpost The People's Pig, also fairly new to that location. The sound of construction hammers and saws could also be heard from a nearby apartment building project.

If this Albina area of North and Northeast Portland has transformed over the past decade, that's all the more reason to double down on preserving its traditional landmarks and their occupants. Which is why one couldn't help but greet with pleasure the listing of the Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church on the National Register of Historic Places.

After all, not only was this church once the largest African-American congregation in the Pacific Northwest, and not only has it long been a cornerstone of Portland's African American community, but it is also the place where one of the 20th century's greatest and most important leaders, Martin Luther King Jr., spoke on his lone trip to Portland.

The congregation calling Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church home began in humbler confines. Thousands of African Americans had come to the Pacific Northwest during World War II to work in the Kaiser shipyards, and the congregation first met and formed in a shipyard worker’s housing project in Vancouver, Washington called Burton Homes.

The church pre-expansion, and as photographed for Burell's book (VAFBC)

But when the war ended in 1945, the housing complex was shut down and the congregation moved to a nearby community center called Bagley Downs. Within a year it closed too, and the congregation occupied a Masonic temple at North Russell Street and Rodney Avenue. But the number of worshippers kept swelling, causing the church in 1947 to take possession of a condemned apartment building at Vancouver Avenue and Hancock Street, with parishioners volunteering to rebuild the structure over three months.

Soon the congregation had its hands full in another way: in 1948, the Vanport flood displaced about 18,000 residents, many of them African-American, including many Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church members. With little assistance from local, state or federal government, congregation members helped each other, and received assistance from two national Baptist organizations.

And the congregation, particularly after a lot of its members moved south from Vanport, continued to grow, which in 1951 prompted one last move: to its current home at 3138 Vancouver Avenue.

A 1958 service, and King's 1961 visit (Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church)

The building was first constructed in 1909 from a design by Richard H. Martin, an English-born longtime Portland architect whose firm designed local landmarks like the First Regiment Armory Annex (now the Gerding Theater) in 1891, the Dekum Building in 1892, and the Scottish Rite Temple in 1902. This church was originally the Central Methodist Episcopal Church, serving a congregation of many Scandinavian immigrants who called Albina home in the early part of the century. The church building was put up for sale in 1951 after the CMEC decided to merge with another congregation, perhaps in part responding to the neighborhood's demographic change.

With its twin spires and an interior featuring hand-carved wooden pews and stained glass from the legendary Povey Brothers Studio, this gothic revival style church was a more majestic home than Vancouver Avenue First Baptist's congregation had ever known. And with room for 600 parishioners, it would serve its ever-growing congregation.

Over the ensuing years this neighborhood would continue to change drastically. Massive projects like Emmanuel Hospital, Memorial Coliseum and Interstate 5 cut significantly into the mostly African American neighborhoods near the church, especially to the west and south. Institutional racism also kept much of the neighborhood from regenerating. But the VAFBC kept on growing, with an additional expansion begun in 1955 and completed in 1958. These expansions are still visible inside the church.

As the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s blossomed, naturally the congregation was involved, with the church strengthening its ties with organizations like the NAACP and the National Urban league. A highlight was the visit to Portland by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1961. After attending an Equal Opportunity Day celebration at Portland State University, he delivered a sermon at Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church . In the ensuing years, the church became active in voter-registration drives, which substantially increased the number of local African Americans registered to vote. The church also became a center of protest, such as a 1963 demonstration outside its confines after the assassination of Medgar Evers. In 1962, the church led a successful boycott of Fred Meyer stores to protest its refusal to hire black clerks. Another demonstration in 1963 was held outside the church after four young African-American girls were murdered in Birmingham. When King was assassinated in 1968, Vancouver Avenue First Baptist hosted a memorial service that included remarks from then-mayor Terry Shrunk and Oregon governor Tom McCall. In subsequent years, the church has hosted prominent leaders like California governor Jerry Brown in 1976 (while he was running for president), Reverend Jesse Jackson in 1983, and civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy in 1987.

Although many years ago I worked within a couple blocks of the church, last week was my fist glimpse inside, with a tour led by Raymond Burell, the church's historian and author of Vancouver Avenue: Yesterday, Today and Forever (Arnica Publishing), a history of the church.

I arrived a little early, taking time to walk around the building and take in the view from across Vancouver. Looking at the wood-framed structure with corrugated metal siding and brick veneer from outside, it seemed pretty clear that the church has been added onto and altered numerous times, with its exterior stairway clogging the front of the building.

Yet particularly in light of all the shiny condo and apartment buildings nearby these days, I came to think of this altered look to the building as a kind of badge of honor: proof that the church, from its beginnings as the Scandinavian immigrants' Methodist church and continuing from its rebirth as the VAFBC and subsequent expansions, as host and witness to the tumultuous times of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam era, continuing through the decades with the transformation of nearly everything around it.

The way that this building has been altered numerous times has, at least in my mind, become its aesthetic more than any of the historical cues or the materials add up to. Sometimes the miles you see on a person, or a building, can be more beautiful than a perfect or expensively put together pretty face. The physical structure at Vancouver and Fargo isn't a conventionally beautiful building, and yet I sincerely see beauty there.

Moving inside, I was struck by a kind of dichotomy to the interiors. On one hand, it had the elegant old pews and the gorgeous Povey Brothers stained glass. (The Poveys were known as the "Tiffany of the Northwest" and their work can be seen at the Pittock Mansion and several other local landmarks.) On the other hand, it had fluorescent lights on the ceiling (although admittedly there were also the original light fixtures for the church, suspended pendant lights of warm colored glass and brass). What I enjoyed about the visit to Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church, though, was the sense that I was visiting a place that had really mattered to people for generations, and had provided a kind of spiritual foundation to its parishioners as well as a community anchor.

Inside Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church (Brian Libby)

Much has been made of the fact that this area of close-in North and Northeast Portland is not, or not as predominantly, an African American enclave as it once was. Williams Avenue, which is named for longtime Vancouver Avenue First Baptist pastor O.B. Williams, is known more for its stream of bike commuters and its wave of new development these days, a veritable poster child for gentrification and high-density development. Many or perhaps a majority of its new residents over the past decade have been Caucasians. There have even been efforts in the neighborhood, amidst this change, to create what's called a Soul District stretching from Interstate Avenue past Martin Luther King Boulevard in North and Northeast (including the land that VAFBC belongs to) that would combine public and private resources to encourage a diversity of businesses and business owners.

I can't tell you if neighborhoods that have historically been home to one culture should remain that way, or if demographics are always inevitably fluid. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between, where amid that inevitable fluidity we come to look upon a select few institutions and places in the built environment to both tell the story of what came before and keep that history alive and relevant in perpetuity (or as close as we can get). Albina may not be home to a lot of Scandinavian immigrants, for example, but there ought to be some evidence and narrative of that history.

That notion is perhaps even more important when it comes to the city's African American history and North/Northeast Portland's collection of churches. Sadly, Portland and Oregon are not as diverse as many (or most) other parts of the country, which means we have all the more collective responsibility to nurture and listen to the minority voices this place does have. Whether it's through a Soul District that encourages and empowers people today, or by protecting our historic building fabric with measures such as National Register listings for VAFBC and perhaps some of the other churches dotting North and Northeast (be they continuing as ecclesiastical or preserved for other uses), we can't stop change, but we can work to assure that change isn't necessarily an outright flip from past to present so much as a continuing narrative thread.

I also found a degree of solace visiting this traditionally African American church amidst a time of national crisis. In July a Pew Research Center poll found that about 78 percent of white evangelical voters favor Donald Trump and his fascist presidential campaign, perhaps the most un-Christian of any major-party candidacy in American history. My visit to Vancouver Avenue First Baptist had nothing to do with politics or liberalism versus conservatism. In a way, it didn't even have much to do with religion at all. It was just a desire to take a peak inside this local institution that had been named to the National Register. Even so, what I had appreciated visiting was the chance to learn about the people who founded, built, expanded and maintained this church (both physically and socially) over the generations, much of it despite an onslaught of societal and institutional bigotry; by necessity, most African American churches are part of their communities' campaigns for social justice. If there is a dark cloud forming over the United States, maybe there is something to learn in such perseverance, even for those of us who don't attend church.

 

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Ironworks to food hub: an early glimpse inside The Redd

The Redd On Salmon Street (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For the past 18 years, I have lived in an apartment in Southeast Portland bordering the Central Eastside Industrial District. As a result, I have often found myself walking amongst its warehouses and zigzagging my bicycle around its busy forklifts. While many of the Central Eastside's buildings are unremarkable from the outside—largely windowless and made from utilitarian materials—I've long enjoyed getting small glimpses through warehouses'  doors that reveal beehives of human and industrial activity inside.

When I arrived at the warehouse at SE Ninth and Salmon a few weeks ago, the circa-1918 former Hesse-Ersted Ironworks (occupied for the last several decades by Custom Stamping), there was no hive of activity inside: just one ponytailed man, Sam Beebe of Ecotrust, the Portland nonprofit that is turning this massive building into a food distribution hub, The Redd On Salmon Street. But the glimpse I got was more than a glimpse. Inside, taking it all in, the building's cavernous, wide-open volumes made my jaw hang open.

A century ago, the Central Eastside was a very different place. There were no tech companies designing apps, no boutique manufacturers at work on wooden iPhone cases, no advertising agencies and hip restaurants. But even then, in addition to the heavy industry and manufacturing, there were food distribution warehouses. The Redd seeks to become something like those companies, but also something new. Inspired by the research from Ecotrust food-systems expert Amanda Oborne, the Redd functions as a central warehouse where small and midsize farmers, ranchers, and other producers can stash their products in cold storage (about 2,000 square feet of cold storage)—until they’re ready to be distributed, thus providing small Oregon farms, ranches and fishermen (or fisherwomen) a chance to make the jump from the industrial food economy to something more organic and local.

Top: Hesse-Ersted Ironworks (Peter J. Hall), bottom: the future Redd (Opsis Architecture)

"The folks in the middle are having a difficult time," Beebe says of the agricultural businesses The Redd seeks to enable and serve. "Imagine you’re the Jones family ranch, a multi generational ranch with 800 cows. You would like to go towards grass-fed beef, but finding the buyers and making the transition? That’s tough. Those agriculture folks in the middle trying to step up to healthier production, to change from hardcore industrial agriculture, they just don’t have the money. One thing to fix is access in the city for distribution, cold storage, value-added processing. So we said, 'We’ll put this block to work for that.'"

"Of course they want to do it," Beebe added. "The fishermen would love to catch fewer fish if they can sell it at a higher price. A farmer, to see his wheat being used in a school cafeteria in his home state? Of course you would want that."

The $23 million, 800,000-square-foot development actually includes not only this massive Hesse-Ersted building, but also the former Intrepid Tile & Marble building across the street, on SE Seventh Avenue, which will mostly be used for large-scale refrigeration. The initial plan had been to build a second building on the block containing the Hesse-Ersted building, but now that they're renovating the building across the street instead, it will allow the renovated ironworks building to stand alone on the site (along with a few cars in the parking lot).

This is of course not the first time that Ecotrust has built a significant building. The Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center, better known as the Ecotrust building, was the first historic redevelopment in the US to receive a gold-level LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) designation from the U.S. Green Building Council when it completed a 2001 Holst Architecture-designed renovation of the circa-1895 J. McCraken Company building. 15 years later, it remains an important landmark of the Pearl District, especially since the old brick building is surrounded by 21st-century condos.

The Redd's site plan and future renovated exterior (Opsis Architecture)

The Hesse-Ersted Ironworks building (which initially had a twin building next door until it was destroyed by arson in the 1950s) doesn't have as much beautiful texture to offer as the Ecotrust building's exposed brick and wood rafters. But thanks to a colorful exterior paint job, which was done as part of an art installation for the 2014 XOXO Festival and kept when the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art held its annual Time-Based Art Festival there last year, the building stands out amongst the other industrial buildings. More importantly, the wide-open volumes it offers are breathtaking. Standing inside, I could look from Salmon Street all the way across the building to Taylor, as if two football fields could have unfolded across the 200x200-foot block.

This wide-open view will be hemmed in a little when a renovation by Opsis Architecture begins in. "It doesn’t make financial sense to keep it one floor," Beebe explains. "So we’ll add a mezzanine—an interior second floor—but basically keep the core, with an atrium." That seems reasonable. One will still be able to get a sense of the vastness of the 1918 original building, but the mezzanine will also help create a sense of The Redd as a hive of activity.

"The food-hub concept has been spreading across the country—there are about 350 of these kinds of distribution centers already—but the Redd offers a new twist, operating as a for-profit business that rents out retail, office, and production-kitchen space to support the behind-the-scenes storage and operations," writes Hannah Wallace in Fast Company, profiling The Redd as part of its World Changing Ideas series

Besides the massive interior volume, one of my favorite things about The Redd is the gigantic stamping machine that Ecotrust left inside after Custom Stamping moved out. It used to exert 900 tons of pressure in order to bend and shape metal, and today, sitting there inert, it seems like some kind of medieval torture device. But it's also oddly beautiful, and a nice reminder amidst The Redd's renovation of the building's industrial past. Besides, Beebe says it would have cost $20,000 to move it.

The Redd interior, with its dormant stamping machine (Brian Libby)

For over a decade we've been talking about how the Central Eastside is changing. Zoning may have kept out the residential development that would have made this district more like the Pearl and South Waterfront. Today there may be lots of tech and creative companies located in the Central Eastside, but there are still lots of industrial businesses. During the Great Recession, for example, the City of Portland found that increasing an allowance for non-industrial companies to locate there kept the district busy, with growth happening even when it wasn't in other central-city neighborhoods. At the same time, the city found this didn't cause a lot of displacement with regard to traditional industrial businesses. The Redd is in many ways a throwback to those original Central Eastside inhabitants, and the many produce companies that used to locate here. Yet it's also very 21st-century Portland: rooted in an economy based on healthy food and living, and on empowering local businesses. Like our farmer's markets, it's also a way to break down rural-urban barriers, not just economically but culturally. And at a time when a horrific amount of historic architecture is being torn down across the city, it fully embraces the old building that has stood there for nearly a century.

If anything, I wish Ecotrust could do a lot more on the renovation front. Can't they take over Centennial Mills from its ham-fisted, demolition-minded overlord, the Portland Development Commission? Can't they make another food hub out of the United Workmen Temple, instead of letting Onder Development and Arthur Mutal reduce our collective history to rubble? If only. Cities are always changing, and unfortunately not always for the better, especially when it comes to preserving our historic architectural fabric. That's all the more reason to be thankful for The Redd twice over, once for their renovation of this former ironworks and once for growing our organic-food and small-purveyor economy.

 

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Allied Works' renovated Oregonian building will be a showstopper

1320 Broadway building rendering (Allied Works)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

About ten years ago, I began making trips to the Oregonian building on a regular basis while contributing freelance visual art reviews to the paper between about 2006 and 2009. Every time I went inside, it seemed hard to believe it was really a Pietro Belluschi-designed building. Sure, the elegantly streamlined limestone exterior seemed Belluschi-like, but inside the ceilings were low and the interior was dark. It felt downright oppressive, not like the grand and well-lit spaces for which this legendary architect was known.

Recently, though, a tour of the in-progress renovation to this circa-1948 Belluschi work (now known as 1320 Broadway), being developed by Seattle-based Urban Renaissance Group into creative spec offices for tenants like Amazon and Elemental Technologies, revealed its architecture to be far more compelling and beautiful than what I saw in the 2000s. The renovation, designed by Allied Works, won't be finished until early next year, but even though only core and shell work are thus far completed, the design and construction team has already revealed the great spaces that have been in hiding for the past few decades.

If you'd like to get a glimpse of the Oregonian building, the Architecture Foundation of Oregon is hosting a fundraiser and tour there tomorrow - Tuesday, July 26 at 4:30PM.

This has never been my favorite Belluschi building. Even aside from the interior, from the street it's not as beautiful to my eyes as a masterwork like the glass-wrapped Equitable building. But it's a different beast, an elegant box wrapped in limestone and granite. And now it has an interior again that reflects the maestro's vision: Quite simply, Pietro Belluschi designed an Oregonian building that began with a wonderful double-height lobby that its owners got rid of and installed a drop ceiling. But that was just the start of the under-utilized and hidden away spaces here. In the back of the building, where the printing presses used to be, is a triple-height space, and on the fourth floor is another double-height space that used to house the KGW TV studio. And then there are the roof decks.

Newspapers and journalists are supposed to be all about uncovering and telling us what we might not otherwise see. But in this case, the story of the hidden-away work of great architecture was practically staring them in the face, or floating above and below them, and went undiscovered. It's almost as if there were a body buried somewhere in the building that the murderer didn't want detectives to uncover, so it was tucked into a dropped ceiling. Really it seems to have been the energy crisis of the '70s that did it. The Oregonian was certainly not alone in this regard. But touring the building, it's jaw-dropping how much better it is than anyone has seen in a long time.

The restoration of this Belluschi building, one of his largest in Portland (perhaps second only in scale to the Equitable Building), would be exciting enough given the architect's place at the top of the pyramid amongst local architects of the past century. But as it happens, the former Oregonian headquarters restoration is being overseen by the top firm of our time, Allied Works. 

Cross-section of the building (Allied Works)

This is not the first time Brad Cloepfil's award-winning firm has renovated or expanded a Belluschi building. About 11 years ago, Allied designed an expansion to a Belluschi-designed home in Portland's West Hills, owned by then-Weiden + Kennedy advertising agency creative director John C. Jay, (which I wrote about for Metropolitan Home magazine). But something John Jay said to me when I was working on the article seems relevant here, as it relates to why Allied is right for this job in a way that goes beyond the novelty of Belluschi-meets-Cloepfil.

"The joke I always use with him is that he’s great at nothing," Jay said back in 2007 in our interview. "He has a tremendous feel for negative space—the site lines and the feeling of spatial relationships."

Indeed, if one thinks about the signature Allied Works-designed projects in Portland, such as the W+K building or PNCA's home in the Beaux Arts 511 Broadway building, it's all about how the designs carve out space from heretofore dark, confining architecture to reveal light and volume.

With that in mind, last week I sat down with three Allied Works architects closely involved with the renovation: Kyle Lommen, Thea Von Geldern, and Philip Balsiger.

"It was brutal," Lommen said of the pre-renovation Oregonian building as our conversation began. "The kind of workspace that existed, it was almost like punishment. They just came through the building and laid acoustic tile ceiling everywhere and knocked out all the double height spaces. What was going on in the world when they said, we don’t want any daylight?"

A double-height space facing Sixth Avenue (Brian Libby)

"Which was providing natural light into all these spaces," Von Geldern added. "These are pretty deep interior spaces. The opportunity to bring light into that interior was there. There’s basically one floor plate that goes all the way through. Everything else is a double height somewhere. Only the third floor goes all the way through.

"Really our first step was just to expose what was there initially," Lommen continued. "There was a very tight budget, so there wasn’t a whole lot we could do. But the bones offered so much."

What's also interesting about the Oregonian building is its position in the downtown core, prominently located along Broadway but in between the hot spots of the main shopping and dining areas to the north and Portland State University to the south. In that way, the building can be a connector. "It’s really activating that end of town and connecting the PSU side to downtown," Von Geldern said of the renovation. "There are tenants who were interested in the property, but had to see that vision that this part of town is going to move. But the building really unlocks the city: it gives this view that’s familiar but you haven’t seen before."

Indeed, as I toured the building, I was surprised by how familiar downtown buildings can seem fresh again when seen from new viewpoints. In the back of the building where the triple-height printing press room used to be (which the renovation caps at two stories because the first floor was actually the basement), for example, there was a perfectly framed view of the Wells Fargo tower, the KOIN Center, and the Edith Green Wendell Wyatt federal building. On the fourth-floor roof deck, one could look up or down Broadway for seemingly miles.

Rendering of the new lobby (Allied Works)

If much of the renovation design was about taking space away, Lommen says a lot of effort went into the lobby and how it could strike the right balance between open-volume grandness and a degree of intimacy. "We tried to do something that once we opened the volume up added some richness and scale," he explained. On the lower portion of the lobby, equivalent to the first floor, the design added long, vertical slats of wood that are inset with polished stainless steel placed at an angle. "From different vantage points when you look at the wall it’s opaque, and from others it opens up and the reflection begins to break down the surface and scale of that wall," Lommen added. "The mirrors are oriented so when you walk in you see more and when you walk out you see less."

For lighting, the lobby includes a series of hanging oval-shaped lamps suspended from the board-formed concrete ceiling. Looking up at them, I was reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright's masterful Johnson Wax building with its ceiling of lilly pad-like circular shapes. "We tried to find a way to light the room at the scale of the room, and trying to leave as much clutter off the ceiling," Lommen said. The architects found a way to embed electrical conduit in the columns, which brought power to the light fixtures and made it possible to "not have anything on the ceiling except the sprinkler pipe. The concrete was so beautiful we wanted to do other things to keep as much possible of the ceiling."

If the wide-open volumes of the Oregonian building were only able to be re-unveiled after the paper moved out, Balsiger cautioned that it never would have been built this way in the first place if not for The Oregonian's specific needs. What's more, he pointed out a major influence on Belluschi, the Turun Sanomat building building by Alvar Aalto in Turku, Finland. "Alto was a huge influence on Belluschi," Balsiger explained. "The Turun Sanomat is a newspaper building with a cafeteria, a printing press. All of that was part of the original design to create these spaces that we now get. It’s a great message to companies: why don’t we make spaces like that to work in?"

A view of the lobby from the mezzanine (Brian Libby)

"You can’t afford to build big spaces like this anymore," Von Geldern answered, noting the realities of class-A office space economics. "Space is expensive. You can have double height but today it would often be just a single bay. To have a public space of this volume that can hold 300 people, it’s incredible."

One of the best parts of the renovation besides uncovering the multi-story volumes was to add back the transparency that Belluschi sought, particularly the ground-floor windows on the entry side. "This whole front façade was closed," Balsiger said. The architects added new entrances on the north and south sides of the building, but most importantly, they restored the nearly floor-to-ceiling glass. "It’s really bring a new face of the building to Broadway," he added. "We definitely made a choice to make it feel as transparent as possible. It’s about seeing into it."

Over the past 15 years, Allied Works has completed a lot of noteworthy projects around the country, from the Museum of Arts & Design in New York to the Seattle Museum, the Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas to the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. In this case, the Oregonian building may wind up being less of a signature Allied Works building in a certain sense, because any architect with half a brain would bring back the same multi-story spaces that Cloepfil's team did. Yet one also has to appreciate the confident sense of balance Allied has brought: to resist putting a heavy-handed fingerprint of its own on the building, but also not so reverential as to resist sensible changes for the future. That lobby in its original form, for example, was even larger than what will exist post-restoration. But the architects wanted to maintain a human scale.

"There’s always a question: what makes this an Allied Works project? It’s nice to do a light touch and still have it feel like ours," Von Geldern said. "Good bones, good space, good light: we can work on the public-space piece of it and sort of walk away."

"You don’t have to scream your name," Balsiger added. "What’s been fun too is to have a conversation with the architect, which I think this project tries to do. You hear what the original building is saying, but times are different. How do you continue the conversation?"

 

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National Trust names Coliseum a National Treasure (and Walton approves)

Veterans Memorial Coliseum (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The National Trust for Historic Preservation yesterday named Portland’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum its newest National Treasure—the first to obtain the designation in the city. The National Trust selected the iconic arena for its historical and architectural significance, as well as its potential to contribute to Portland’s cultural and economic vitality. As part of its National Treasure campaign, the National Trust will work with Portland city officials, residents, business community, local partners and other stakeholders to identify the best rehabilitation and enhancement options to assure that the modernist landmark shines with renewed brilliance.

Built in 1960 and designed by the globally-renowned firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the Coliseum, despite deferred maintenance and lack of up-to-date amenities, continues to serve the people of Portland, holding an average of 117 events per year, including Portland Winterhawks hockey matches, high school graduations, and the popular, century-old Portland Rose Festival’s Grand Floral Parade, which it was specifically designed to host. A third-party study completed for the City of Portland last year finds that not only does the building continue to break even despite its disrepair, but restoration will increase its bookings and profitability.

“This is a great day for all of us who care about Portland’s historic places and their significance nationwide,” said Barbara Pahl, Senior Vice President of Field Services for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “By naming the Veterans Memorial Coliseum a National Treasure, we honor the values that have made this site a treasured host to many of Portland’s collective memories and witness to some of the city’s most remarkable moments over the past 56 years. We embrace this opportunity to collaborate in identifying a path forward to assure that the VMC continues to contribute to a thriving civic life in Portland for many more generations.”

“This designation is great news for both preservationists who love the history and architecture of the building, and for Portlanders who want to see this asset evolve and continue to serve an important role in our civic life,” said Portland Mayor Charlie Hales. “I’m looking forward to the National Trust’s recommendations for uses for the VMC.”

Actually, though, the VMC doesn't need recommendations for uses. It is a successful multi-purpose arena, as the study City Council commissioned shows. The Coliseum's problem is that City Council has not approved the funds needed for a restoration that will only lead to more profits.

The Coliseum in 1960 (Art Hupy)

“We are excited about the Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum’s new designation from the National Trust for Historic Preservation,” City Commissioners Nick Fish and Amanda Fritz said in a joint statement. “We are very grateful for the successful work of the advocates and volunteers who have been working to protect this important building.”

I also had the good fortune to speak at yesterday's ceremony, in my role as the co-chair of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum. "Veterans Memorial Coliseum is a building that we have a lot of passion for, whether it’s as a work of timeless midcentury-modern architecture, as a veterans’ memorial, or as a community gathering place for generations of Oregonians," I said to begin the National Treasure press conference. "We know that great cities preserve and protect their most important landmarks, not just for cultural and historic factors but because great places have enduring economic value."

"Over the past seven years, the Coliseum stayed busy, but it has also existed in a kind of Purgatory, unable to get the restoration that it, like any building, always ultimately needs. We believe there is a strong economic case for restoring Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The city’s own third-party study, completed last year, showed that not only does the building continue to break even in its disrepair, but restoring the Coliseum would increase profitability. The Coliseum fulfills an important size niche in the local market, larger than the downtown auditoriums topping out at around 3,000 seats but more intimate than the 20,000-seat Moda Center next door. We believe the Coliseum can be a cultural centerpiece of a high-density, transit oriented district."

But rather than share with you the rest of my own comments, I'd like to share a statement from Trail Blazers legend Bill Walton, which was also read at the event yesterday:

"39 years ago this week, right here, on the banks of the powerful and majestic Willamette River, our beloved Portland Trail Blazers made history, changed the world and plotted a new path forward to the future…I was there then, as our Blazer team won the NBA championship at this magnificent shrine and temple —the Memorial Coliseum. I'll never forget that day, not only as a defining moment in Oregon sports history and my life, but also as a statewide explosion of joy, happiness and civic pride."

"Today most all of the other NBA arenas I played in have been torn down. But Veterans Memorial Coliseum still stands tall and proud because of its very special place in our lives and as a one-of-a-kind work of architecture."

Grand Floral Parade at the Coliseum (Jeremy Bittermann)

"Today I'm happy to take this well-deserved and long-overdue moment to celebrate with the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Portland City Council, and all Oregonians as our wonderful Coliseum is officially named a National Treasure."

"Although basketball will always be the first thing I think of when I reflect on the significance of this building, it is so much more than that. Its world-class design with natural light pouring into the arena, is an important and enduring tribute to the brave veterans who gave their lives and everything else for us in both World War II and the Korean War."

"I'm a proud, loyal, passionate and grateful man— whether it's for the beautiful game we call basketball, the rapturous power of music, especially when created by the Grateful Dead, or the natural beauty of my second home Oregon. You can also add our Veterans Memorial Coliseum to that list: a landmark that continues to inspire each and every one of us, and a place where we can all come together in joyous harmony. The spirit of '77 lives on, in and with this spectacular Coliseum. And with the powerful actions and commitment that we display here right now, we know that that will thankfully be true for generations to come."

"And forever more, I will always be able to say, that yes—I was there… In the spring of 1977… And also today—the day we saved our Glass Palace."

"Thank you Portland…Thank you Blazers…Thank you Oregon…Thanks for shining the light…Thanks for being the light…Thanks for making my dreams come true."

 

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Nike's Tinker Hatfield and Skylab's Jeff Kovel discuss their Memorial Coliseum renovation plan

Memorial Coliseum renovation from Interstate Avenue (Skylab Architecture)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For the past several days, Portland was the center of the track and field universe, with the world's best athletes in town to compete in the IAAF World Indoor Championships at the Oregon Convention Center. And indeed it was popular, with the OCC's temporary bleachers selling out their 7,000-seat capacity.

Over the past two years or more, however, behind the scenes, negotiations were being made to possibly hold the World Indoor Championships at a larger venue practically next door: Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

After taking office in 2013, mayor Charlie Hales reportedly spent months negotiating with Nike to try and involve the company as a private partner on an ambitious, more than $100 million Coliseum restoration that would have given the arena a new indoor track and much more. Ultimately the project didn't happen, perhaps because the city was counting Nike for a lot more than Portland itself was contributing, or perhaps for other reasons, like the company's ongoing reticence to put down roots in Portland proper or the fact that it's currently busy expanding its Beaverton campus. Now the likeliest outcome is probably a less ambitious restoration, something akin to the $32 million plan that nearly came to fruition under Mayor Sam Adams in 2012, or there could likely further limbo and slow deterioration of a profitable city asset, ultimately sometimes known as demolition by neglect.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Nike's Tinker Hatfield, who oversaw the creation of a redesign plan for the Coliseum on behalf of the company, and Jeff Kovel, founding principal of Skylab, which produced the renovation design. Hatfield is a legendary designer behind iconic products like the Air Jordan shoe, prompting Fortune magazine's to name him to its list of the 100 most influential designers of the 20th century in 1998. But the Portland-area native was trained as an architect at the University of Oregon.

The Coliseum renovation design made a few key steps, many of which were discussed and brainstormed over a long period of time involving not only Skylab and Nike but architect Mike McCulloch, who helped connect all the parties and advocated for a light touch on the building wherever possible, yet also recommended some of the flexible moves that would give the building a promising new future. Other stakeholders and players such as Portland Winterhawks president Doug Piper and developer Douglas Obletz were also reportedly part of the mix.

Most notable of the major design moves was expanding and transforming the concrete seating bowl to include room for concessions, ADA access, and a modest array of luxury boxes. Skylab's design also clad the new bowl in reclaimed Oregon Douglas fir. The design also created a new outdoor deck on the west side of the building, facing the Willamette River. It removed part of the lowest-level seating area in order to fit in a regulation 200-meter indoor track, but replaced it with temporary seating. The design improved access to the memorial walls outside the building in a sunken garden by turning that space into a new pedestrian street going all the way north to Broadway, simultaneously breathing new life into the large underground exhibit hall with walls of glass and skylights. The design additionally created a hydraulic floor to the arena that could be lifted up and down as needed, allowing for concerts of various sizes, an Olympic swimming pool, a velodrome, and other formats. Skylab's plan also extended beyond the Coliseum to create usable outdoor space atop the adjacent parking garages.

At first when I heard about this design, I was worried. Cladding the bowl in wood? Adding luxury boxes? But the more I saw and learned about what Skylab created, the more I liked it. Now I'm gutted that the city and Nike weren't able to come to an agreement, and hopeful, perhaps against reality, that such an ambitious design can still be realized.  

Inside a renovated Coliseum hosting track (Skylab Architecture)

Remodel over reinvention

Jeff Kovel described Skylab's approach as a remodel over a reinvention. "I think people had been approaching it to blow it up and build a new vision there," he said. "We came at it saying, ‘What are the inherent opportunities we could tap into?’ I think most people don’t know about the exhibit hall under the plaza, for example."

"If you study the site pre-Rose Garden you see a lot of aspects that were taken away, almost carelessly," Kovel added. "One of those, I think, is the idea that the veterans memorial is actually an on-grade street rather than a sunken plaza. Right now the only thing preventing that is a pair of cinder-block walls underneath the [entrance] bridge. These could go away. Restore that street and make it the connection to the neighborhood north of Broadway. We could then put new glass facades on the underground exposition hall and bring that whole piece to life, with the result being more traffic to the memorials as well as creating the seed for larger development to the north. It’s really bigger than the Coliseum renovation."

History

Kovel and Hatfield then went on to talk about the genesis of Nike's interest in the project was the history of indoor track meets that used to be held regularly at the Coliseum. "It was a short track that was banked," Kovel said. "At that time it wasn’t quite a regulation 200-meter track. It was around 175 or 165. This was before the standards of events became really strict but they had really exciting track meets there because of the small scale." Among those to find glory competing at Memorial Coliseum was Nike's patron saint, Steve Prefontaine. (You can see him set a world indoor-track record for the two mile race in 1972 here.)

"I was at some of those," Hatfield said. "It was even more electric than Hayward field. It was crazy. Indoor track when done in an arena like this is a three-ring circus. It’s raucous. Whatever that circumference was, 140 meters or something, it necessitated a steeper bank. It almost seemed a little dangerous. People would literally have to be moving fast to get around that thing, just like in a velodrome. There was this chaos out there that added to the excitement or to the entertainment value. They had to remove a section of it for the 60 [meter run]. You had to remove a section of the track and run through here to a heavily-padded wall."

Hatfield also noted that the original handshake between Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman occurred at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, across from Memorial Coliseum. "It was because they were both in Portland attending a track meet," he added. "During the day there’d be high school and small college competition all day long, and the night sessions were the top level of athletes in the world. I saw a world record by CK Yang in the pole vault. He was a decathlete. It was amazing. There was some sawdust out there and I grabbed some, because I thought it was historic."

Architectural model of the renovated Coliseum (Skylab Architecture)

The Nike designer and visionary also recalled the public skating rink that used to exist at the Coliseum. "We used to live two miles from this building, and we would take our young daughters skating," he remembered. "We’d all go there as a family. It was just the coolest. We’d not only ice skate but go roller skating on the concourse."

Of the Coliseum's design, Hatfield said: "There’s a purity to it, a simplification. Sometimes innovation is the distilling of ideas down to its essence. This design always struck us as important because of what’s not there. It’s beautifully simple. In my book it’s one of the top two or three buildings in Portland we've got."

Hatfield then noted an old photograph of the newly-opened Coliseum with hundreds of 1950s cars parked out front; he remembered going to the Coliseum as a child with a sense of wonder that built as he made his way toward the entrance. "You’d walk through this sea of cars and then this space-age bowl would be lit up at night. I’d go there for track meets, for the Russian circus. I remember walking toward this gleaming glass box. It was exciting. It was something that you could only find in this part of Portland, that kind of feeling of the future. I’m old enough to have gone to the world’s fair in Seattle. The reality is my recollection was that Seattle was this modern place where I went as a kid. I never thought of Portland that way until I went to this place. It was this un-Portland-like splash of bold modernity, if you will. It just didn’t exist anywhere else."

Nike's interest

Hatfield also recalled the moment when Phil Knight first approached him about investigating a possible Coliseum renovation that could return indoor track there on a regular basis. It was 2007 and the Davis Cup finals were being played in Portland. Hatfield said Knight "gave me tickets and said, 'I want you to go watch the tennis match and come back afterward and tell me if we could ever put a 200-meter track in there. I went there and I paced it, I came back and told him what I thought would have to happen. I told him the only way you could was to carve away some concrete. You couldn’t do it any other way. Because I knew the dimensions. He was like, 'God damn it. Okay, thanks.' I think he was hoping there was a relatively easy way to retrofit this building so you could have track meets in there. If that was the case, he was willing to possibly invest in it. I actually showed him some sketches so he’d know what it meant by carving concrete away. I said, 'I don’t know what the number is, but it’s not insignificant to carve away the concrete. But it in no way compromises the structural integrity of the building itself, because of the way it was designed.' But I think he personally lost a little bit of interest because he saw too much investment."

Then, Hatfield says, Knight seemed to maintain interest after all. "I felt he was encouraging me to work with the city and say, 'Maybe the city should do this.' From my perspective, I think at some point Nike started believing that this is such an important building the city should be front and center with preservation or remodeling the building. There were a lot of things in the way but I didn’t quite let up myself. Then I hired Jeff out of my discretionary budget at Nike to work on this project. I think they came up with a fantastic idea. The rising floor idea, that’s the ticket."

"The idea was to say, 'Let’s make this ideal for track but see what other types of activities you could do as well," Kovel explained in reference to the hydraulic floor. You could build retractable seating outside of that floor, so you could restore the bowl, essentially. You don’t really lose anything with this. You only gain."

"I’m not a purist renovation specialist or anything like that, but I do respect old architecture," Hatfield said. "Sometimes something is so famous and important that you restore it as it was built, and sometimes you respect the arch but you improve it. Every chateau in France, every important building in London—they’ve all been altered. They’ve all been modified a little bit or maybe a lot over time. This needs to be a versatile arena for modern day activities, and as a venue for sports and theater and everything else, but it does need some updating."

"This region is kind of like track and field central," Hatfield added. My comments to [Tracktown USA president] Vin Lananna were kind of focused around the fact that Hayward Field is the center for track and field events in the US for outdoors. Why wouldn’t you want to expand that footprint to a much larger city? Portland could become the indoor center of the universe for track and field. They’re really two different sports. They’re separate in the eyes of the NCAA. They’re closely related. Being able to run those tight corners, accelerating in the sprints: it’s aggressive because you have less space."

Animation of Coliseum's hydraulic floor and movable seating (Skylab Architecture)

Renovation additives

Kovel then talked about some of the additives, such as the expanded bowl, the west-side deck area and more about the hydraulic floor. "The idea of thickening the bowl to embed the original columns was actually a way of making the scheme better," he explained. "It’s something they might have done if they could afford it or the construction technology was better. And the west side is really where you want to add space. This was born out of asking how we could access that space but find a way to put a terrace on that you wouldn’t look at and think it was clipped on: that had a sculptural relationship to the old building. Doing a roof as a flex zone underneath seemed like an interesting idea. And when you look at the subterranean maps, there are already stairs there to the midway point. It would be utilizing the existing infrastructure and building off of that." Of the hydraulic floor, the architect said the idea was "when the floor came up you could walk underneath it. It could be where the teams were warming up before, and then come up through the floor. That arrival moment would be quite spectacular."

The architect also stressed that this Coliseum renovation plan was not necessarily track-centered, at least not in a way that's impractical. "What I think is great about this plan is it enhances just about every other use as well," Kovel said. "By trying to fit a 200-meter track in we tried to look at what else it could do. For action sports, for concerts you could have the stage rise up out of the system. It can restore back to hockey, back to basketball, but there are new possibilities like a velodrome. We did a velodrome model that fits within that footprint. There’s been a number of events with temporary pools for things like Olympic trials for swimming. But that wouldn’t fit in the current bowl capacity. And multiple basketball courts, multiple tennis courts. I think while the goal was to do a world-class track, it elevated both sport and concerts and other events at the same time. In addition to the Rose Parade and other things happening there."

Hatfield also noted the value in the underground exhibit-hall spaces. "What makes it unique among almost all arenas today is it has what’s left of the old exhibit hall space underneath the plaza. It’s still quite useful for sporting events if you chose to do so," he explained. "Most arenas don’t have that kind of prep or practice space. Even the Rose Garden falls into that category, as big and well thought out as it is for usage. It doesn’t have that space. So that to me is a really nice instigator or a validator of why this building is so important for all kinds of performances inside and outside of sport. You have this ability for people to prepare, warm up. You could talk about different ways that could be utilized. It’s kind of too bad the rest of the exhibit space was removed. The auto show was there. It was the convention center before there was a convention center."

"We thought the starting point of this big planned development would be to refurbish the VMC, but what it really becomes is the anchor point for the whole district, or that collection of properties there," Hatfield added. "You’d want to initiate some kind of further development. If you want to follow this thing logically through, if you look at the way cities get built in the first place, it’s a tried and true way to develop: you build something people want to be associated with, and then you build other things. We talked about offices, housing, skateboard parks, an outdoor 300-meter track with smaller sized recreation field in the middle. You could create a city, a town, inside the city, that has a reason for being."

Site plan and rendering of new walkway at memorials level (Skylab Architecture)

Anchor of a district

Hatfield explained that although the starting point was a Veterans Memorial Coliseum restoration, "what it really becomes is the anchor point for the whole district, or that collection of properties there. You’d want to initiate some kind of further development. If you want to follow this thing logically through, if you look at the way cities get built in the first place, it’s a tried and true way to develop: you build something people want to be associated with, and then you build other things. We talked about offices, housing, skateboard parks, an outdoor 300-meter track with smaller sized recreation field in the middle. You could create a town inside the city that has a reason for being."

The legendary Nike designer also made reference to an idea forwarded last fall by Commissioner Steve Novick to tear down the Coliseum for affordable housing (which, in a separate post, several experts have said is a bad idea from a planning and even an affordable-housing perspective). "The first thing you want to ask when you create affordable housing is, 'Where do you recreate?' If you’re going to attract families, which is what affordable housing means to me, you’re thinking of vertical structures where you have access to outdoor recreation as well," Hatfield said. "The thing that really drives me crazy, I have to tell you, is that to build a facility like the Coliseum from the ground up is probably half a billion dollars. Why would you tear down something that’s probably worth, if you put something into it, half a billion dollars? The most environmental thing you can do is not tear something down. And by having that building there and making space around it, you could have a thriving community."

I then mentioned to Hatfield that the City of Portland commissioned a 2015 study of the Coliseum's market potential, and it found that the building would turn more and more profit as it's restored. In fact, the Coliseum turns a profit even now, despite its deferred maintenance. But in my private conversations with City of Portland officials, they have suggested the problem is that it would take too many years for a $35 or $100 million return on investment to be recovered, as if the city-owned Coliseum were not a public building.

"Here’s something I just don’t understand: do civic buildings, buildings built for the betterment of the city with a civic role to play, ever make money? By definition they’re not moneymaking adventures," Hatfield said. "I just bristle when I hear anyone say, here’s much money it would make or lose if it were this way or that way. When does anybody build anything civic with that in mind? Does something built for the common good of a society that values education and entertainment, at what point does making money off those things really kick in? I just don’t understand how that makes sense, or where the argument is."

"On top of that, how come no one does ever factor in the economic impact of a destination like this for the hotels and restaurants and the other service providers in the area?"

"They are looking backwards instead of forward," Kovel added. "They are not looking at how in 20 years there will be a lot more people there and the venue will be needed all the more."

A renovated Coliseum from the Pearl District (Skylab Architecture)

Nike and the City of Portland

Hatfield recalled a meeting at Skylab with Commissioner Novick to view the Skylab expansion design. "We went through the pitch, but it was like the whole time he was waiting to tell us that it was just a matter of dollars and cents," he said. The commissioner questioned whether the city should spend money to restore the building, even though it turns a profit even in its disrepair. "I had to finally say, ‘Nike pays me to come up with ideas. And they cost a lot of money to dink around with new ideas. But Nike’s business plan is to then leverage those ideas into more business," Hatfield explained. "The idea itself is expensive: in apparel, in footwear, in marketing. All of those things cost a lot of money, especially to innovate. They pay me a lot of money to be an idea guy. They get that it starts there. A business model is having a great idea and creating value and wealth and leveraging that into a business plan. That could be an arguing point here: this is what you leverage off of, this facility that could be used by many different people in this community, and in the region. If you think vertically a little bit there’s enough space here for a lot of action, a lot of urban development around it, including across Broadway."

"We are not developers," Hatfield continued. "It’s not in our business plan to go around and invest in buildings all over the place, other than for our own managerial and office needs. But what we do spend money on is to essentially promote sport and activity and events. We spend millions of dollars all over the world promoting and advocating for people to be involved in activity—just to stay healthy. So we of course are in favor of any kinds of environments that give people an opportunity to engage in sports and fitness, and to engage in the entertainment of watching those things. So we are in favor of Veterans Memorial Coliseum. We are in favor of renovating it. And our role, to be clear, is that if facilities are there we are there to be the promoters, the ones who bring in the athletes. Because that’s what we do. Somebody else builds stadiums and office buildings and housing and parks. We have partnered with the City of Portland and Portland Public Schools to upgrade all the sports facilities in the city. We’ve done the same thing with Portland Parks with new surfaces for basketball and tennis and things like that. We don’t want to own the parks but ensure people have the opportunity to participate. We’d look at a project like this and go, 'Love it, see the value in it being preserved, in renovating it so more events could come to this.' There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that Portland is a better city if we have a balanced perspective. You can’t just put in housing and office towers. That doesn’t make it a great city. Tearing down the VMC would make this less of a great city. It’s truly a facility for people in all levels of sport and entertainment at all levels. I love that. Nike loves that."

 

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Metallic midcentury: visiting the Alcoa Care-free Home

Alcoa Care-free Home (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last month, The Oregonian's Janet Eastman reported on Oregon's only Alcoa Care-free Home, one of 24 houses built around the United States in the 1950s (this one completed in 1957) by what was then called the Aluminum Company of America to showcase how the material could be used in all kinds of residential applications from structural framing down to the nails.

Like the much better-known Case Study Houses that were completed beginning in 1948, which were sponsored Arts & Architecture magazine and US Steel, or even Eichler and Rummer homes built by the hundreds in California and Oregon over the ensuing decades, these Alcoa houses epitomize some of the leading-edge thinking of the day about how to create open, column-free interior space as well as to combine indoor and outdoor living.

As Eastman's story noted, legendary Portland architect Pietro Belluschi, himself a master of single-family houses, consulted the company on its homes, which were ultimately designed by Washington, DC architect Charles Goodman (who also designed the city's original National Airport). Besides Belluschi being a leader in post-World War II residential design, he had also embraced the possibilities of aluminum, particularly with 1947's Equitable Building, the first in the world with an aluminum curtain wall.

Inside the Alcoa Care-free Home (Brian Libby)

When I was offered the chance to visit Portland's Alcoa Care-free Home last week (along with architectural tour-guide and historian Eric Wheeler), it was a no-brainer to make the trek to Raleigh Hills. 

(Side note: I normally don't write about homes that are currently for sale, as this one is. I don't want the blog to act as real-estate marketing. But the honest fact is that its being for sale is what allowed us to come inside and see it. And I was too fond of the house not to share the story of the visit.)

Approaching the house, the first thing one notices is its purple ribbed aluminum siding, as well as the decorative woven aluminum grilles covering its floor-to-ceiling plate glass. Although its form is not unlike that of a ranch or midcentury modern house, the color and ornament almost made the house feel postmodern, even though it came from the heyday of Chuck Berry rather than that of Michael Jackson.

Bedroom and living room from the Alcoa Home's interior courtyard (Brian Libby)

Indeed, the house's signature material is everywhere, from window and screen-door frames to skylights to shower enclosures. Yet when I was walking around the home, aluminum wasn't always what I was thinking about. Vaulted cypress ceilings give the home a distinctively Northwest feel. And as with some of those better-known examples of unique midcentury-modern residential design from Eichler or Richard Neutra (of Case Study fame) or Belluschi, it was all about openness, flexibility and the opportunity to bring natural light deep into the interior.

In that regard, one modification to the house made a lot of sense. Goodman's original design was essentially U-shaped, but the right side of the U was devoted to a carport and a workshop. One of the home's owners converted the workshop into an additional bedroom and converted the courtyard, which was already fully covered by the roof (with large skylights), into an indoor-outdoor space by enclosing it with a glass wall and sliding-glass door. The flooring here is still the original outdoor tile, and there is no furniture; just a hot tub. But I enjoyed this creation of a truly hybrid indoor-outdoor architectural space. The combination of the newly created bedroom from the workshop and making the courtyard capable of being fully interior also took the square footage from 1900 to over 2800.

Blueprint for the Alcoa Care-free home (Brian Libby)

Ultimately Alcoa's Care-free home series cost more than the company expected, particularly as aluminum rose from its low prices in the initial years after the war, and thus these homes were not sufficiently competitive with wood-framed houses to continue being built beyond the 1950s. Yet it's worth noting that with next year bringing the Portland Care-free home's 70th birthday, it seems to be in excellent shape physically. Some of the aluminum detailing looks thick and clunky by today's standards, but there's no reason one couldn't change some of that and still retain what's great about the house.

And besides, overall the Alcoa Care-free home it feels as relevant to contemporary living as ever because it's so open. There were moments on our visit when I could look through two or three rooms at once, though the glass. And there just didn't seem to be any portion of the square footage that didn't receive a lot of light.

When I was growing up in the '70s, Alcoa used to run TV commercials to the jingle, "Alcoa can't wait!" Ultimately the country could wait for aluminum houses - especially in a region like the Pacific Northwest with trees by the hundreds of thousands. Even so, it's a reminder of the sense of experimentation and future thinking culture of design and building 

 

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Mayoral candidates address housing, density, preservation at Restore Oregon forum

Sarah Iannarone, Ted Wheeler and Jules Bailey (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last night's mayoral debate at First Congregational Church, hosted by Restore Oregon, was dramatic even before it began.

Just as moderator Peggy Moretti was starting her opening remarks, a protestor came onto the stage and insisted that in addition to the invited trio of candidates - Ted Wheeler, Sarah Iannarone and Jules Bailey - two others, David Schor (assistant attorney general at the Oregon Department of Justice) and Sean Davis (a writing teacher at Mt. Hood Community College and an Iraq War veteran), be allowed to join in. That particular protester didn't stay to hear most of the quintet's remarks, but a group of activists carrying signs advocating housing-reform measures such as rent control remained active throughout, and the three-person debate became a quintet.

The announced topic of the conversation was "Keeping Portland PORTLAND" by preserving character and livability while embracing growth and density. Whether it was because of the activists or just a reflection of what is this campaign's hot-button issue, the conversation turned more toward density and housing affordability than it did toward historic preservation.

The answers to Moretti's first question, in which she asked the candidates to name their favorite old building or place in Portland, told me that perhaps none of them - or maybe only Iannarone - have a real appreciation for historic architectural landmarks and their value in our city. 

Iannarone said that while renovations of landmarks like the Ladd Carriage House and the Portland Armory were impressive, she preferred the June Key Delta House, which involved a successful grassroots campaign to turn a former abandoned Arco gas station into an ultra-sustainable meeting house that meets Living Building Challenge standards. But outside of that, no one could come up with a significant individual historic landmark to mention. Wheeler cited the Central Eastside Industrial District overall, which certainly includes lots of renovated old buildings (and where Wheeler has his campaign headquarters), but its mention seemed less like an appreciation of historic buildings than a segue into talking about challenges there such as homelessness and traffic. Bailey mentioned the stretch of Southeast Belmont, near where he grew up, that includes the conversion of a former dairy into a Zupan's market and the cluster of retail there. Davis mentioned an old Quonset hut he helped renovate into an American Legion post. Schor mentioned the waterfront itself.

Moretti then asked the candidates what they envision downtown and the central city looking like in 20 years. Will it be nothing but tall skyscrapers and no old buildings? This turned out to be a reflection of how the candidates feel about Portland's increasing densification. Bailey, for example, said that while local downtown landmarks like the probably soon-to-be-demolished Ancient Order United Workmen Temple should have greater protection, there's nothing wrong with adding density in places like the downtown core where it's appropriate. Wheeler addressed how Oregon "has among the weakest standards in the nation when it comes to preserving historic architecture," he said. "When you build up, the risk [of demolishing historic properties] increases dramatically. Focus density on the transit corridors and town centers. But the conversation here is what will we do to strengthen our laws and increase incentives to protect our historic architecture. The Workmen Temple is an example with everything that’s wrong with historic preservation today."

"I want to focus on what makes downtown livable now: trees, parks, getting cars increasingly out of the urban core," Iannarone said. "Oslo just committed to a car free central business district by 2019." She also argued that old buildings in the downtown core have economic value, and that the diversity of architecture and people and income levels is all part of the mix. People go to Paris and Milan and Barcelona because there’s historic architecture and diversity," she added.

Moretti and the protest-dictated quintet of mayoral candidates (Brian Libby)

Schor then brought the question back around to the hot-button topic of affordability: "If we focus solely on density and not on affordability and the uses we need to maintain, downtown will lose its vitality," he said. "We’re going to have to also think about how we can keep people downtown as the cost of living begins to rise. How do we keep housing affordable in the urban core?"

Moretti then asked, "If we all agree we want to keep the significant historic buildings, should there be incentives? What kinds?"

"We need a more robust level of protection, but that needs to happen at the state level," Schor added. To this, Moretti mentioned Oregon being the only US state that requires owner consent for a property being declared historic. Given that we also lack the historic-preservation tax credits almost every other state has, it creates a double-whammy of impetus for demolition.

"We don’t have enough carrots or sticks in our local tool box," Iannarone said. She also mentioned some local laws that could be changed or even just enforced. As became evident with the Workmen Temple, for example, the City of Portland needs to remove the loophole that allows owners to remove historic properties from the city's Historic Building Inventory, thus avoiding a 120-day waiting period before demolition. And we haven’t updated our Historic Building Inventory since the 1980s," she added.

That means, as Wheeler pointed out, that the newest buildings on the inventory are from the 1930s; nothing built afterward is listed.

"We need more incentives," Wheeler said of historic preservation. "We have owner consent [for declaring properties historic], and it’s derived from the state constitution, so we’re unlikely to be able to change that any time soon. If we can’t change that we need strong incentives. We’re one of the only states in the country that does not have robust incentives." He mentioned a failed bill from the last Oregon Legislature session, Senate Bill 565, which would have provided those historic tax credits, but didn’t pass.

Moretti asked, "How do we add density? Where do we put it?"

"Growth and density can go hand in hand with historic preservation," Bailey said. "I grew up in inner Southeast Portland. Take a random walk and you’ll see a lot of duplexes, triplexes, garden home apartments. And they’re very much part of the neighborhood. But they’re not allowed by zoning today. We can go back to that. We need a supply side response: we need more housing."

Wheeler then echoed the need to change zoning to allow the so-called missing-middle housing, and he also mentioned the importance of small housing options in existing single-family neighborhoods such as accessory dwelling units.

"We need more, more, more and more housing," Iannarone said. "There are many ways to do affordable infill in neighborhoods. And not just in my neighborhood [Lents] with $150,000 homes. I think we can also create incentives by letting people adapt them inside. We can create a lot more small units."

Moretti then said to the candidates, "It would be unrealistic to stop all demolition. But many would like to see it curbed. How do we do that? And where they do come down, how do we make sure what replaces it is better?"

Davis mentioned having recently testified before City Council about the recently adopted plan to require houses being taken down to be deconstructed to preserve their materials. "Not only does that benefit the environment, but it creates jobs," he said. All five candidates said they supported the new deconstruction rule.

"There will be demolitions," Wheeler said. "The question is how do we limit them? A bad policy outcome is if a historic cottage is demolished and what’s built is a much larger house that houses the same number of people. We have to have standards. If you’re going to demolish, we should capture the tax increment value as it’s assessed and make that a pool for affordable or workforce hosing. And we need standards to make sure the new houses have the same scale and mass as what they’re replacing."

"We don’t have a lot of tools," Iannarone answered. "We need to incentivize the outcomes we want and disincentivize what we don’t. We need to protect those trees. We need to make sure we’re looking at energy. We need to charge carbon impact fees. A 1,600-square-foot house uses the same energy as a LEED Platinum-rated 2900-square foot house."

Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple (Cafe Unknown)

"What concerns me is big developers coming in and buying up older homes and putting up cookie-cutter houses," Bailey said. "Real estate transfer taxes are unconstitutional. But we can set standards with zoning. We also need to make it easier to get homes on the historic registry and harder for an owner to take it off. What if we said you have to have a home that goes up with a better energy performance, or better density?"

Moretti asked the candidates, "How do we achieve this affordability we all want to see?"

To this question Schor had a compelling idea. "I propose to create a dedicated revenue source for affordable housing," he said. To fund it?  "Tax the top one percent of income owners."

"We need more supply," Bailey answered. "Affordability is a function of cost, supply and demand, and income. We need more middle-wage jobs. We need to address cost. One reason you see lotline-to-lotline homes is it would cost that much to recoup permitting and fees. I propose a fast track for market rate housing. Third, we do need more kinds of housing. And fourth, we need more housing options."

"Talk to the people," Davis said. "Have that tenant-landlord agreement saying, 'We’ll not raise your rent without notice for 90 days.' Inclusionary zoning failed in committee. I like that idea 20 percent of units in any new development will be affordable."

"Start with the city’s own policies and the cost it takes to bring affordable housing online," Wheeler said. "The design review process is broken as it relates to affordability. Most of us strongly support inclusionary zoning. But it still doesn’t allow Portland to craft its own policies. The bill has been watered down."

Moretti then asked an audience-submitted question: "What thoughts do the candidates have for encouraging better designed buildings?" This question sounded hopelessly vague, but most of the candidates took it to mean a question not about architectural style but scale.

"You don’t want me as your architect," Wheeler said, explaining that he has little sense of architectural aesthetics or taste. "But new construction is out of scale."

Iannarone then made an important distinction. "This can be coded language when you talk about character," she said. "We have to make sure historic neighborhoods don’t just become enclaves for privileged people. There’s no accounting for good taste. What can we talk about? Scale."

Davis also made an important point here about being realistic. "You can’t put it all on the mayor," he said. "You have to go to the neighborhood meetings and make your voice heard."

"Design review is broken," Bailey said. "There’s not a lot of predictability. Some buildings sail through and some don’t. And some change on the back end. We need consistency, and that’s only fair. And that will reduce cost. And on the residential side, one tool might be the city has had competitions on infill design. Having that pre-set design might be a way."

This is the point where I started to grow a little concerned by the responses as they relate to maintaining architectural quality in our city. Both Wheeler and Bailey were adamant that the city's Design Review process is flawed. That's true to a degree, in that the Design Commission is all voluntary and unpaid, and since so much is under construction they've become overwhelmed by the volume. But Wheeler and especially Bailey seemed to be going a step further by questioning the validity of the Design Commission's purpose: to maintain a level of pedestrian friendliness at the street level and architectural quality overall. And while Iannarone's point about the idea of maintaining the architectural character of neighborhoods can be construed a code word for restricting certain peoples from a neighborhood, it would be a shame if she came out against having historic districts, which are one of a city's most important historic preservation tools and why certain areas of town like the Alphabet District and Irvington have retained so much great historic architecture.

Another audience question asked, "What will you do to prevent real estate speculation, and what tools will you use to force developers to build affordable housing?"

"You can’t stop real estate speculation but you can mitigate the consequences," Wheeler said. "Housing is not like any other commodity. That’s why I have supported tenants’ rights."

"I propose community managed, community owned public housing," Schor said. "You need tenant rights and just-cause eviction reform and rent control, but also investing in appropriate public housing managed by tenants that will be affordable forever."

At this point there were still lots of audience questions to get to, but your faithful scribe's tank was on empty. If there were questions during the ensuing overtime period that addressed historic landmarks under threat other than the United Workmen Temple, such as Centennial Mills or Memorial Coliseum, I didn't hear them. There's no arguing that today we're facing a crisis of homelessness and affordable housing as Portland's cost of living, home prices and median rents all skyrocket, and so it's hard to take issue with this forming the core of the conversation, or with much of the talk going to questions of density. I just hope that if one of these five candidates becomes mayor, he or she will remember that cities are defined not just by economic conditions, but the great places we build and maintain. Just about any political candidate's platform is a reflection of the concerns being voiced by constituents, and housing is the topic of the day, both as it relates to affordability as well as to the physical makeup of our neighborhoods. Yet finding the right balance between density, affordability and home demolitions will not be enough to keep Portland Portland. It is also our shared landmarks that help define us, and that make others want to visit and migrate to our city. Some of that is the waterfront and parks that certain candidates mention, but it's also our major and most historic works of architecture.

 

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Architect George Crandall and artist Carye Bye on Big Pink

US Bancorp Tower (Carye Bye)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

At a time when more buildings of twenty-plus stories are being built in Portland than perhaps ever before, and when new height limits are poised to allow more buildings to go tall, artist Carye Bye's "Big Pink Love Show," a portfolio of more than a decade's worth of photographs of the circa-1983 US Bancorp Tower (of course more commonly known as Big Pink), give us reason to consider a major part of the city's skyline built more than three decades ago.

"It just stood out," Bye recalled when I asked her how her love for the building came about. "I think it was the moment I found out it had a nickname. Over time I started to realize Portland doesn’t really have a centerpiece like the Eiffel Tower or the Space Needle. Big Pink kind of became one for me because of its standing alone [on the skyline]. I started to notice and take pictures of it. As time went on, I personified it: 'It’s my friend Big Pink.' I’d be biking and think, 'There it is.'"

Big Pink is the second-tallest building in the city, its 536 feet just eight feet shorter than the Wells Fargo Center (but with two more floors). More than the Wells Fargo, though, Big Pink enjoys a more prominent place on the skyline because it sits to the north of the other comparably sized buildings. It forms a kind of bookend for the downtown along Burnside. The '80s wasn't a great time for architecture, including office towers. Much of the elegant transparency of these buildings was lost when energy codes tightened, which called for either more reflective glass or less glass overall. But Big Pink, which arrived just a year before the Portland Building, in many ways its opposite, has a simple elegance thanks to its pink granite facade material and the added visual pizzazz of its trapezoidal shape, which makes the building look different depending on one's vantage point.

Crandall and Bye (Brian Libby)

"It looks different all the time. I didn't notice at first, but at some point, I was like, 'That building is not square.' It seems like it would be obvious from the beginning," added Bye, who also has created a series of guidebooks and zines about Portland and also runs the popular Hidden Portland For The Curious page on Facebook - but unfortunately is leaving the city for San Antonio. "But I never studied architecture and never looked that closely. I realized it looked really different from different viewpoints, and depending on the way the light hits it. It’s an architectural marvel to me."

One of the more enthusiastic visitors to Bye's show was architect George Crandall of Crandall Arambula, the award-winning urban design and planning firm, which has provided central-city planning for cities and towns all over the United States. Before Crandall co-led his own firm, and before he was an urban designer, he worked for more than a decade and a half at the Portland office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which designed Big Pink along with other local landmarks like Memorial Coliseum, the Standard Insurance Center (my favorite downtown office building), and Autzen Stadium in Eugene (not to mention landmarks around the world from the Sears Tower in Chicago to the new World Trade Center). In fact, Crandall was a lead designer of Big Pink.

"I thought it was just great," Crandall said of the photo show as the three of us gathered to talk about the building.

Big Pink and an admirer (Carye Bye)

Crandall was raised in Canada and educated at the University of Arizona, but he sought out a job in SOM's Portland office both for the city itself and for the firm. "I wanted to work for the biggest, baddest firm in the country," he said. "I wanted a liberal environment and Portland had that." After being hired in 1967, Crandall remembers US Bank approaching the firm in the early 1970s. "They wanted to do a big building and SOM knew more about big buildings than anyone in town."

The great Pietro Belluschi was also a design consultant for Big Pink, which brought the legendary architect full circle. When Belluschi had left Portland in 1951 to become dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's school of architecture (where he remained until 1965), SOM bought his firm and retained most of its staff. 

The tradition inside the firm was to have an in-house competition inside the firm, and Crandall led one team, which competed against one led by associate principal Thomas Houha. 

The US Bancorp Tower comprised of two parts, an operations center of just a few stories on the south side facing Oak Street and then the tower along Burnside. "The issue was how to do it," Crandall said. "I also knew that the bank wanted their front door on Oak. Burnside was kind of a bad street at the time. As usual, in design competitions, you scratch around and look at a number of schemes. It became obvious to me that Ankeny [which bisects the site about two-thirds to the north] was establishing a seam. I thought if I put the building here and create a galleria through it, and connect to the second phase." But perhaps his biggest epiphany was how a parallelogram shape could open up some of the edges of the site and give the building a more uncommon, angular form. One thing that also occurred to me in doing this scheme was that if the tower was back to the south it would be buried, but if it was up against Burnside it would be prominent forever. You would look down Burnside whichever way you go and it’s this narrow needle."

Drawing of Big Pink's site and shape (George Crandall)

"The other scheme the other guys were working on was traditional: not very imaginative, very clean and simple," Crandall added. "The issue was could we build a parallelogram and not spend a lot of money. Usually with a parallelogram you spend a lot of money. But I had some steel contractors look at it. There was no penalty. So in-house the decision was to go with the scheme I developed. Then the issue was to get the bank to buy in to having the tower on this end [Burnside]. I built a model, eight feet long, of this galleria. They could see that Oak could be their front door. The idea then was to pull the building back and create a little forecourt. That was how it started."

Regarding the role of Belluschi as a consultant, "They wanted an experienced architect who could advise them on what was the best thing to do," Crandall explained. "Pietro came into the office and looked at the scheme. I knew Pietro, being Italian, would know about gallerias. He looked at it and he said, “George, that is the right thing to do. I will talk to the bank about that.”

But Belluschi did more than provide shuttle diplomacy between architect and client. Big Pink might not have been pink without it. "We were looking for a stone. Petro said he’d come across this Spanish pink granite," Crandall remembered. "It was warm and we had a lot of cold buildings. The Spanish pink became the stone and away we went."

This was all still in the 1970s. The seven-story operations center was completed first, in 1975, and there would be a nearly an eight-year gap between that and completion of the 42-story tower.

A woodcut image of the building (Carye Bye)

"I knew it would be different," Crandall said. "The difference between it and most buildings is that the others never change. This one changes constantly because of the fact that it’s not right angles, and because of the way the light hits it. Sometimes it appears to be wide, sometimes not. It's that subtlety, then, and really the form itself, the location, and the color, that makes it unique in the city. It’s changing all the time."

"Going to Union Station up Fifth [Avenue], it looks almost like a triangle, or like a flat building," Bye added.

Despite Big Pink becoming a kind of mini-icon for the city, as well as SOM's local and national legacy, its Portland office closed just seven years after the building's 1983 completion. "We had a downturn in the economy. SOM was highly specialized in two things: office buildings and hospitals. That market just dried up," Crandall explained. "They weren’t diverse enough to survive here."

The architect also said that Big Pink came at a time when Portland was first starting to look more closely at and regulate how large downtown buildings interfaced with the street, and how that impacted his decision to put windows all along the ground floor, something not always common at the time. "The New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable had talked about our Portland bunker buildings, and how we were becoming an example of how to destroy a downtown," Crandall said. "It’s all about how a building relates to the street, to the ground. It’s not about what happens in the air, much as architects like to think. An example would be Nordstrom. It was a wonderful thing to bring downtown, especially in those days: a new department store. But as an urban design solution it’s a failure: blank walls all around it. It doesn’t open up to the street. The change came when we said we needed urban design guidelines. In 1983 we had our first guidelines. I realized what was going on when I did the lower building. We needed glass frontage all around the building. So you see that along these edges. We needed openness. Then you started to see changes around town."

Big Pink and Union Station (Brian Libby)

Big Pink arrived around the same time that the Portland Building was under construction; it too tried to be pedestrian-friendly, but its covered loggias weren't as inviting as planned. They seem less like arcades and more like caves. "Graves didn’t understand what he was doing," Crandall said. "I had dinner with him and he said to me [of the Portland Building], 'It’s going to be the most humane building in the United States.' And of course it’s a jail."

Crandall also recalled a crisis of conscious he felt early in his time at SOM in the late '60s, about a project that thankfully did not come to fruition: the Mt. Hood Freeway. Not only would it have cleared away scores if not hundreds of Southeast Portland neighborhood blocks, but Portland wound up using the funds instead to begin building the MAX light rail network.

"SOM when I came had just done the environmental impact statement for the freeway. The city already had the money in the bank for it. I had a civil engineering degree as well as architecture. They said, 'Could you help out on the project?' I spent half my time upstairs in the design studio, and half my time downstairs on the impact statement. I started to learn the complexities of the urban environment: acoustics, history, all of that stuff. That was an education. I was force-fed in a hell of a hurry. But you could see this freeway would cut a huge path through Portland. We realized how terrible a mistake it would be and we had to remain objective. Thankfully I was then the project manager for a range of alternatives."

 

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Notes from a Centennial Mills forum

Chet Orloff addresses a Centennial Mills forum (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Last week, just a few blocks from where demolition crews have been busy dismantling the majority of Centennial Mills, a trio of interested parties—the Pearl District Neighborhood Association's Patricia Gardner, developer and philanthropist Jordan Schnitzer, and historian Chet Orloff—hosted a public forum to explore how this historic development might still be saved.

Gardner began by walking the audience through the past 15-plus years of fits and starts: "In 2000 the city bought the site. It was a working flour mill all the way through the ‘90s. The city wanted to tear it down and build a park. We went through a public involvement process as part of the Pearl District Development plan. It talked about a different vision: not tearing it all down, and having some sort of public, civic use to that site along with park land. We started lobbying the city hard to keep the buildings. In 2005 they decided to keep them. That took a lot of effort. They voted to move forward with a framework plan and come up with a different vision that involved keeping some parts of the site for historical purposes. A developer was chosen with public input, LAB Holding. The recession hit, PDC kind of changed the rules on them, and that deal fell apart. Another RFP went out, and Harsch Investments was chosen. And that deal fell apart."

Now, Gardner explained, Centennial Mills faces the threat of total demolition, especially after Mayor Charlie Hales withdrew his support for investing in redevelopment.

Chet Orloff, who teaches at Portland State University but has a long history including as head of the Oregon Historical Society and much more, provided a fascinating brief run-through of Centennial Mills' historical importance.

"Oregon's rich topsoil was deposited by volcanoes thousands of years ago, and it produces this great soft wheat," Orloff explained. "There began a trading system based first on furs and gold and silver, heading across the Pacific to China and on to Europe. At some point in the 1860s, as the story goes, some trader took it home, ground it up, and made it into noodles, and discovered that Oregon soft white wheat made great noodles. It sounds silly, but I think there’s a lot of truth to it. Within the next 10 years, China became the major market for Oregon wheat. Today it’s still the major export, wheat, and China is still the biggest importer. It began before statehood and continues to this day. Wheat would be brought down to the Columbia waterfront and shipped by sternwheelers, loaded into 100-pound sacks and brought down to the docks of Portland."

"By the 1880s, there were three wealthy cities in the US: New York first, Philadelphia second, and Portland third," Orloff added. "We were the third wealthiest city in the nation based on the wheat trade. We were able to build buildings like the Pioneer Courthouse and the Portland Hotel in the 1890s. It led to an elegant collection of historic buildings downtown and along the park blocks, most of which were funded through the wheat trade."

Orloff also quoted from a previous City Council resolution, written in the early 2000s after the Pearl District Neighborhood Association and it supporters convinced the city not to demolish Centennial Mills, Resolution 36320, which recognized the development “as a symbol of Portland’s rich history, and a valuable artifact of the industrial working waterfront.”

Next came Jordan Schnitzer, who may be best known as an art collector and philanthropist but whose company, Harsch, operates 23 million square feet of real estate up and down the west coast. Schnitzer recalled first being approached by the now-late developer Art DeMuro over a decade ago to compete for the renovation commission that ultimately went to LAB Holding. When that deal fell through, Harsch and DeMuro's Venerable Properties won the job, and then after DeMuro passed away Harsch agreed to continue on.

Centennial Mills, summer 2015 (Brian Libby)

"Art and I talked about how you want to make a profit, but the bigger intent was doing what was right for the site and community," Schnitzer recalled. "For any of us that are lucky enough to touch the land, there’s an obligation to do what’s right."

The developer also expressed a motivation to share a series of development options that had been offered to the city, even if they were no longer relevant with the expiration of the Harsch-PDC contract, because throughout the process PDC had prevented them from sharing these plans with the public, he said.

Ultimately the deal fell through, Schnitzer explained, because of a gap between what PDC and the city were willing to devote to the project and what it seemed to need. Yet as one examines the plans, it seems clear that PDC has viable options beside demolition.

"First of all, we asked what it would cost to clear the site. PDC projected $16 million. We realized if you cleared the site, dealt with the environmental issues, that was $18 million," Schnitzer explained. "We then started looking at various levels of development from a little bit to the max. Usually as a developer, the more you build, in theory, the more profitable it is. This was the exact opposite. Because of the lack of parking, no public buses or public transportation near it, the worse it got. The biggest build-out was $207milion with a highrise tower. My god, you needed $82 million in public investment. You needed more parking, more infrastructure. It didn’t work."

After that, Schnitzer was approached by members of his consultant team, including architect Tim Eddy of Hennebery Eddy and urban designer/artist Tad Savinar, who sought more modest approaches. But Schnitzer also felt a pedestrian bridge over Naito Parkway and the adjacent railroad tracks was essential. "One plan had us basically restore the flour mill and nothing else, put in the greenway, put in the dock and the bridge," Schnitzer explained. "Right now it’s just not very easy to access the site, physically and attitudinally. We wanted people to be able to move from The Fields Park to this. We talked to Maya Lin about doing a bridge. Why the dock? I said, 'There’s no place on this side of the river where you can get to the water.' So the bridge and dock felt critical."

"That first proposal took $27 million," Schnitzer continued. "The next one restored the feed and flour mill buildings. The third one put in two apartment projects, 60 or 70 units apiece, restored the mills and put an events center in there, and some retail and office. We put in floating docks and places for boats to come up."

"I showed [Mayor] Charlie [Hales] all of this. I said, 'When you look at this site compared to some years ago, there’s no shortage of housing. There’s no shortage of office. But what we’re always short of is open space and public space. Less development is better here than more.' I said, 'We’ve got some major ideas. Let’s coordinate this with Fields Park, because everything’s going to be built around it.' I said, 'Charlie, my favorite plan is basically this plan, the middle plan, where we restore the two best buildings to honor the spirit of what was here.' Schnitzer then described the mayor as favoring a plan with apartments.  We were called eventually to PDC for a meeting. We talked about what we thought the preferred option was for the mayor. We were never called back."

The city basically seems to have in the ballpark of $20 million for Centennial Mills and realizes that this is not enough to restore the complex, even if only the two mill buildings and little else would be preserved. With the surrounding urban renewal area eventually losing funding in the next few years, that further complicates investment. The city's partnership with a private developer ought to create enough capital to take action to repair at least the two flour mill buildings, but there is still a gap. However, one of the points of calling this public forum was to encourage the audience (which happened to be a packed house) to make their voice heard, to the mayor, City Council, and beyond. In the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't take a miracle for the city to find additional dollars. And even if that takes additional time, Gardner and others at the meeting encouraged supporters also to lobby the city and PDC not to fully demolish the site. 

It's understandable that there may be reluctance to commit money when we can't accomplish all of our goals. And it's understandable that some of the complex had to be demolished given its disrepair. But hopefully there is still opportunity to save some of what's left, particularly the two flour mill buildings. Anything would be better than a full-scale leveling of the site. At the very least, one would think the two flour mill buildings could be preserved as ruins, and the rest made into a park. Schnitzer is right that a pedestrian bridge ultimately ought to happen, especially since it has been part of the long-range plan for the Pearl District ever since the 2001 Portland River District Park System urban design framework study by Peter Walker and Partners Landscape Architecture. But if necessary, I can't help but think we should be willing to temporarily abandon the bridge and the dock ideas if that's what it takes to devote all existing available resources to saving the two flour mill buildings. Those two structures are what absolutely positively have to stay.

 

 

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Arambula, Cortright & Jain discredit Novick's Coliseum-for-housing plan

Veterans Memorial Coliseum (Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In late October of last year, Commissioner Steve Novick introduced in City Council an amendment to an urban planning budget bill that called for Veterans Memorial Coliseum to be demolished and the land sold to a developer, on the condition that a sizable portion of the units be reserved for affordable housing. The amendment was defeated in a 3-2 vote, with Mayor Charlie Hales joining Commissioner Nick Fish and Commissioner Amanda Fritz in the majority opposition. 

At the time of the vote, Novick told KGW reporter Chris Willis that he knew tearing down the Coliseum was an unpopular idea, but that he was committed to solving the affordable-housing crisis, and the city-owned Coliseum site presented an opportunity to take a significant step. Despite losing the amendment vote, Novick has vowed to continue with his efforts to tear down the Coliseum for affordable housing, even making it a tenet of his re-election campaign.

Admittedly as the chair of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, I am biased against anything that would harm or threaten this National Register-listed landmark. But having written about urban design, planning and affordable housing for the past decade and a half, I also was surprised to see an idea forwarded that made very little practical sense even from solely an affordable-housing and urban-design perspective.

Even if Veterans Memorial Coliseum weren't standing there, the notion of plopping down affordable housing on an isolated site at the Rose Quarter just because the city owns the land seems backwards compared to what generations of planning and affordable-housing and community design have taught us. Successful affordable housing projects come when they are well integrated into neighborhoods: places where young families can access parks and schools, and where affordable housing is part of a neighborhood mix of incomes. The Rose Quarter isn't even a neighborhood at all! Successful affordable housing projects are also part of a holistic planning process. What was proposed at the Coliseum site  smacks of Robert Moses and the urban renewal era of mid-20th-century apartment towers that clustered poor families together in a way that stifled their transition into the middle class.

But given my lack of impartiality regarding the Coliseum, I decided to seek out some veterans of urban design, economic development and planning to see if they agreed. In short, they did. Unequivocally.

Don Arambula

My first call was to Don Arambula, who co-leads Crandall Arambula, an award-winning urban design, planning, and architecture firm that has won awards for downtown planning commissions all over the continent, from Kansas City and Edmonton to Bellevue and Medford. Crandall Arambula has consulted on both regional and neighborhood planning as well as transit and street planning.

"It’s not a good strategy," Arambula said as our conversation about Novick's Coliseum-for-housing plan began. "It’s a non-starter to tear that building down. It’s one of the few jewels in the city. You’re destroying an irreplaceable building that could be a centerpiece for a mixed-income community that creates value and an asset for affordable housing in the Rose Quarter area. And to out of hand tear something down without having a strategy for the Rose Quarter and the central city itself is way too premature. I can appreciate the creative thought of saying, ‘Where are our opportunities?’ But when we want affordable housing we want it in mixed-income communities."

"We work on affordable housing all over the country," Arambula added. "Where it’s successful, you’re getting affordable housing without concentrations of poverty. The only way you can get affordable housing right is to do the planning required to say, ‘We want mixed income communities.’ There’s so many studies that say if you’ve got children and live in a mixed-income community, their likelihood of elevating themselves is much greater than it is in concentrations of poverty. And that’s the objective: to improve the life and the economic well being of everybody who lives there, and not just give them a place to live. Have a broader social agenda." 

Veterans Memorial Coliseum (Brian Libby)

Arambula also argued that this attempt to demolish the Coliseum for housing speaks of a larger problem. "We’ve got a disconnect within the city of Portland right now," he explained. "We’re doing a lot of policy planning at a 10,000-foot level and we’re jumping right to individual projects without enough in-depth district planning. The city is committed to doing 30 to 40 percent affordable housing in urban renewal areas. You need to say, ‘Where is that going to go?' And you need to acquire the sites and go get the developers to build on that site. Is there land in the Rose Quarter available other than the Coliseum? Or in South Waterfront, or the Pearl? Are there other areas within the central city where this affordable housing needs to go?' It’s way premature to start getting at specific projects. You need planning to say, ‘What is the right amount, what is the right location, and what are the amenities needed to make it work, as a community?’ There needs to be an independent planning study, and we don’t do that anymore. It’s all silo'd. It’s all piecemeal."

There is also the context of Broadway, which runs along the northern edge of the Rose Quarter and is sure to transform in the years ahead thanks to a new streetcar line as well as its centralized location. "Broadway north of the Rose Quarter needs to be rethought," Arambula said. "We went through the central city planning process and didn’t do any meaningful urban design. There wasn’t really integrated land use and transportation planning. It’s easy to throw out an idea, but there needs to be a process that’s connected with land and transportation. What is the overall character of Broadway? It’s not the environment anyone would want to live in today. Why would you just throw in affordable housing? You have a couple of sports bars there. Where’s the amenity? Where’s the park? Where’s the open space? In the absence of a larger strategy you’re creating a housing ghetto, and that’s the last thing we need. We don’t need to isolate affordable housing. And cherry picking a site and dropping in housing is not a good idea, whether it’s in a parking lot or over a parking structure or on the Coliseum site. It doesn’t make any sense."

"I applaud him for trying to get affordable housing in the central city," Arambula said of Novick, "but he’s jumping to a solution without going through a process."

Joe Cortright

The head of Impresa Consulting, a Portland based consulting firm specializing in metropolitan economies, economist Joe Cortright also sees an effort to build affordable housing at the Coliseum site as misguided.

"This whole idea you’re going to build affordable housing that’s segregated from other housing doesn’t make a lot of sense. If we do assisted or public housing, we have to do it in a way that leads to greater integration and mixed income communities," he explained. "That’s why places like the Pearl and South Waterfront make sense. You saw Columbia Villa being built from more of a mixed-income model. But to say, ‘Here’s this site,’ to pick a site and put a bunch of affordable housing by itself flies in the face of that. Starting with a particular site is kind of backwards from the proposition of integrating it into the neighborhoods."

Cortright didn't outright reject housing in this area, although it hasn't so far been the intent. "If the plan were to do residential in the Rose Quarter, which I don’t hear anybody saying, that might be one thing. But to build a concentration of low and moderate-income housing isn’t sensible to me," Cortright added. "It flies in the face of what has been the policy direction for a long time."

The economist also sees a pattern in this top-down thinking. "There are some eerie parallels to the Columbia crossing," he said. "People said, 'It’s in horrible shape and it will fall down, so we should demolish it.' The cost of demolition was about the same cost as a seismic retrofit. Demolition isn’t free, and you should ask yourself what you could do with those resources if you put them into the building." Indeed, the city's own study estimates it would cost about $14 million to demolish the building, while even a low-level $32 million restoration like the one nearly approved in 2012 would, studies show, help the building turn a profit and to make sizable contributions to the local economy.

"To me," Cortright said, "the question is what are the different alternative uses of that site and that money? Is that the use the community wants to make on it? Would we sell off Waterfront Park? It might have a bigger economic impact than its use as a park. But is that what we want for our city? The big question with what I’d call a civic asset like the Coliseum, one served well by transit and proximity to the Oregon Convention Center (and this is also a planning question) would be: what’s our vision for that locale?"

Portland Winterhawks' Winter Classic game at the Coliseum last year (Brian Libby)

Cortright also pointed out the context of this effort to demolish the Coliseum for housing happening when there is a lot of other available land for affordable housing that's better suited. "Given what’s happened in the Lloyd district, where parking and low-density space is being redeveloped, that’s clearly the first best alternative," he said.

The economist also wondered aloud regarding the financial aspect of the proposal. "How does this pencil out for a developer? I’d love to see the pro forma on that. The only way it seems to work to me is the city eats the cost of the demolition and whoever develops it gets to develop it for more than low-income housing. They’d have to develop it for market rate housing too." And if that happens, Novick's effort would no longer be about affordable housing on the Coliseum site, or not primarily. It would be a private-developer give-away with some affordable units tacked on.

Arun Jain

Now a professor at the Technical University of Berlin's Institute for Urban & Regional Planning, international consultant, researcher, mentor and a UN advisor, Arun Jain served as the City of Portland's first Chief Urban Designer from 2003-09, at the invitation of then-mayor Vera Katz.

"I can’t say I’m terribly surprised," Jain said of the proposal to tear down Memorial Coliseum for housing. "It’s not a new thing for a politician to go gung ho for a 'great' idea they may have even though their sphere of expertise may be out of depth, or lacking a well-rounded perspective. The interest and effort is certainly laudable, so it’s not something to be outraged about. It’s just unfortunate."

"Does the pressure for affordable housing mean Portland should panic and start putting it anywhere, or can we be more deliberate about it, and what kinds of communities is the city building if it’s just building in a panic?"

Jain remembered first considering the Coliseum when Mayor Katz asked him to investigate that site and six others in the central city for a possible Major League Baseball stadium, at the request of a group of supporters trying to bring a team to Portland. After that effort fizzled, "Mayor Katz and I got together for a (rare) full day at City Hall with only a facilitator. She said, ‘Can we strategize as to what would actually work for Memorial Coliseum?’"

"I pointed out to her the displacement history [with African American neighborhoods cleared out to make way for the Coliseum], and the fact is that this area is completely packed during events but also completely dead when nothing is going on: just a collection of huge empty buildings. But I also pointed out to her that Memorial Coliseum is in a unique location. It’s sitting on a promontory, visible from most places of elevation in the downtown. It stands out as this prominent structure on the hill. It’s got good transit access and it’s not surrounded by anything that would be affected by noise. So we asked ourselves, ‘What’s the highest and best use for that location? The answer was it had to be civic."

Jain and Katz came up with the idea of building "the equivalent of the Lincoln Center for the performing arts," as he described it, in the Rose Quarter, with the Coliseum and the Rose Garden [now the Moda Center] augmented by smaller, but hi-tech oriented performing arts supporting daytime revenue generating venues to activate the dead periods. "Then we called in the two guys from the Office of Management and Finance who were managing the MC at the time. We said, 'Here’s the thinking. How would you take it forward? That’s where we ran into a dead end. OMF said, 'We don’t know how to pursue a development mix of this kind.' They looked at us and said, 'We don’t have the energy to do all that, so we’re just going to fix the leak in the roof and put in new carpet which would be much cheaper. And it kind of died on the vine right there."

"I’m not saying our solution was the best solution," Jain added, "but something along those lines needs to be done." To tear down the Coliseum is "neutering or castrating the few truly civic assets Portland has left. It’s tragic."

Jain also argued that solving Portland's affordable housing crisis requires "some kind of clear-headed understanding of what’s driving the demand for housing. You might start by asking, 'Is the demand because housing is being overpriced, or is there a genuine shortage?' Both require somewhat different strategies. If there’s an escalation in the value of housing, you have to take on a financing strategy, because it’s not necessarily only a supply issue. Then you can ask, 'What kind of financial measures are possible to provide assistance to those who are being squeezed out?' It’s not just about the production of housing in terms of making up a shortfall (real or perceived). It’s about taking a multifaceted approach that includes improving the economic assets and capacity of the people needing housing. And you have to look at it in terms of the urban design as well. Portland’s got this great history of livable neighborhoods all over the city. You say, 'That’s our blueprint.' Which means that if you’re going to build new communities, they need to be as least as good as the neighborhoods that exist: with a diversity of housing type and size and cost. And they all need to have access to parks, schools and retail—fundamental civic functions."

Veterans Memorial Coliseum from the Broadway Bridge (Brian Libby)

"I’d take this community development approach and say, ‘Let’s look at the neighborhoods we already have and check how much we can add to them,'" the urban designer continued. "You need to do that sort of assessment and say, 'In this neighborhood here’s a segment we can squeeze in there, without destroying its nature and character.' I prefer to look at complex problems in this comprehensive sort of way. A variety of different strategies have to be put together to solve this kind of housing issue." It’s worth noting that Berlin currently has a massive housing shortfall due to immigrants and growing attractiveness. Jain is pushing for that city to consider similar ideas across a more mature spectrum of possibilities.

Jain also addressed the notion of Coliseum demolition for housing when there is lots of under-utilized land available. "One of the things I did in the then-Bureau of Planning was to use a report (since updated) about the un-utilized capacity of the downtown core. Looking at the findings from an urban design perspective, we were able to show that Portland’s inner core had a 30-60 year supply of unutilized zoned capacity and volume. And while this capacity is not necessarily where it is needed, it did clearly demonstrate that Portland does not have a shortage of sites or locations. This goes back to the MC. What are we getting in a tizzy about if that location is underutilized, when there are other sites that are eminently more suited for housing?"

"The point," he added, "is that city officials often get ideas that may seem like they are solving several problems at the same time, but often those problems don’t relate. So trying to conjure a common solution is likely to have a poorer outcome than the status quo. In this instance there is a need to understand that Portland (like many other cities) is underdeveloped and over-zoned. It’s important to understand there’s some under-utilized capacity to be found in almost every corner of the city. If Portland has a housing shortage, it should be asking where, and working to fill in these gaps first, not tear down what is. It ought to begin with enhancing existing neighborhoods."

"It’s the same old nonsense, basically," Jain concluded. "You can’t blame a developer for wanting to put his or her average idea on a high-value site. But somebody in the city needs to say, 'These high-value sites are not going to be pissed away. They’re catalytic locations that can, and should spur all the kinds of precious civic-minded functions the city needs. Everyone should know them and their public value, and then either collectively work to accelerate their development as civic oriented catalysts, or bank them for their highest and best use. These sites are the city’s family jewels. Memorial Coliseum is one of them."

 

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The Society Hotel: preservation and progress in Old Town

Society Hotel from Third Avenue (NashCo Photography)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In a year that has seen more historic buildings destroyed than any in recent memory, from neighborhood homes to hulking riverside landmarks, visiting the recently-opened Society Hotel was refreshing.

Located at NW Third Avenue and Davis Street in the historic Old Town/Chinatown district, the building was originally completed in 1881 and has had many lives over its 134-year history. It has been a residence hotel for mariners, a hospital, and a Chinese dance hall. But since 1975, it had been mostly unoccupied, which is often a death sentence for old buildings.

Given the near-panic that Portland has felt this year since a New Yorker magazine article alerted us to a massive earthquake on the way, one that would claim the city's unreinforced masonry buildings (such as this one) more easily than any other type of building, it's all the more happy news to see that should the quake come, this is a structure that will not crumble. The Society Hotel renovation added over one million pounds of new concrete foundations and walls to strengthen the original brick structure, as part of a renovation seeking LEED sustainable-building certification.

The Society Hotel building, originally known as the Mariners Building and renovated under the guidance of local architect Philip Sydnor of Integrate Architecture, is not just a relatively rare example of 19th Century architecture in the downtown core. It's one of the 20 or so remaining cast-iron front buildings left in the city, which makes it something extra-special, and a vital part of Old Town as such. Sometimes when I'm arguing with members of the general public about preservation, someone rings in with an empty platitude like, "We can't live in the past," as if historic preservation is some kind of naive endeavor that ignores our contemporary needs. But when I visited the Society Hotel, it told a different story. It was teeming with activity and life.

Society Hotel lobby and a suite (NashCo Photography)

Over the past decade or more, Old Town/Chinatown has transformed, but in ways both encouraging and concerning. On one hand, projects like the University of Oregon's White Stag Block and the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine have added energy and diversity. But we have also clustered a lot of social-service agencies and bars in the district, neither of which are a bad thing per se but arguably have in sheer numbers overwhelmed the neighborhood's balance. The best neighborhoods are neither overly rich nor poor, neither devoid of nightlife nor dominated by it, and never given over to single uses. Projects like the Society Hotel aren't going to single-handedly change the character and sense of place in Old Town/Chinatown, but there's little arguing what a positive addition the project is, especially when you consider that this is not an expensive boutique hotel only open to top income earners. Its small rooms are affordable, and its basement, given over to a hostel-style array of bunk beds, invites low-budget travelers to join in.

My recent tour of the Society Hotel, with co-developer and general contractor Matt Siegel, was a kind of journey through its history. We started, of course, in the lobby, which was made wide-open by eliminating an interior wall and now houses a small cafe in addition to the check-in area. In a certain sense, the ground floor is the one portion not original to the 1881 building; about a decade after its completion, the entire structure was lifted up by one level to make the heretofore three-story building four stories. Upper floors, however, had been left almost completely untouched since 1945, revealing not only the brick walls but also, during the renovation a host of artifacts for its renovators to find, from old newspapers (some of which have been framed and hung in the rooms) to roller skates and stoves, and even a large jug of wine hidden in the floor during Prohibition. Walking amongst the upstairs rooms or the preserved original stairway, the renovation just feels right: not without signs of modernity, but mostly given over to a faithful historic restoration.

The hotel prior to renovation (NashCo Photography)

On the top floor is the Society Hotel's roof deck, which offers one of the best views of the city: a panorama that looks out at downtown and the Pearl and the west hills in one direction, and out across the Willamette in the other. I've stood atop other buildings before, usually downtown, that offered higher vantage points. But I've scarcely encountered a view that encompassed both the wide panorama of the downtown core and the close-up view of this most historic of Portland districts.

Standing atop the Society Hotel brings one a sense of both the micro and the macro: a sense of this special urban context between Burnside, Broadway and the river, and the bigger buildings that surround it. Standing there, it was easy to contemplate not just the success of the Society Hotel but also the opportunity and challenge of Old Town: a district with both architectural and demographic issues, but one too irreplaceable not to value and to back with investment and love.

 

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Architect and owner discuss potential United Workmen Temple and Hotel Albion demolition

United Workmen Temple, 1981 (University of Oregon Libraries)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A few weeks ago came the news that two historic Portland buildings, the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple and the Hotel Albion (housing the Lotus Cafe), would be demolished to make way for a 20-story hotel and a 10-story office building. Both properties were removed at the owners' request from the city's Historic Resource Inventory, usually the beginning of a slippery slope towards demolition. And within days, Restore Oregon began concurrent appeals to the City and to LUBA, arguing that the City erred in removing the Albion Hotel and Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple from the Historic Resource Inventory.

To learn more about what was happening and whether the two historic buildings' fates were really sealed, I first contacted Ankrom Moisan, the Portland firm associated with the hotel and office designs scheduled to replace them.

"We’ve been trying for about a year," said Ankrom Moisan's Michael Great about efforts to find a way to restore the buildings and add new construction around them, on the other two quarters of the block. But in investigating the costs, "it started painting a picture that we weren’t able to work through, unfortunately," Great added. "I think the entire development team is pretty disappointed. I know I am. We all talked internally a lot and wish there was more we could do. But it does sound like the Temple will come down."

As seen in Design Commission hearings and on the Next Portland blog, originally the idea was to keep the Romanesque Revival-style United Workman Temple and cantilever more floors over it from the adjacent building. "We were pretty excited about that potential," Great added. "We looked at punching structure down through it. We really dug into the realities of cantilevering it over the top, and the lateral impacts of sheer walls. It was becoming more and more difficult."

I asked why they couldn't just restore the temple and, instead of adding cantilevered floors above it, just build the adjacent building taller. "That’s also something we’ve looked at," Great said. "But there are a lot of significant setbacks unique to that district. It makes it impossible to do that. The floor plates of those types of buildings at the quarter block get too small considering the cores."

"With the reality of the block size," added Ankrom's Carolyn Forsyth, "once you get a core in there that has all the stuff a highrise core needs to have, the plate left over is not something a modern office tenant would be fit to use."

I feel sorry for architects and developers who get involved with a historic building project thinking they can restore it but then wind up as the people destroying it. That was a big part of the tenor of the ensuing conversation I had with one of the building's developers, Jeff Arthur of Arthur Mutal. I'd initially tried calling co-developer Jack Onder of Onder Development, but none of the calls were answered or returned. Arthur, however, was willing to be open about their journey from enthusiastic restorers to reluctant demolishers.

"I’m a native Portlander and have been doing a lot of adaptive reuse and some historical reuse for about 10 years," Arthur said, referencing projects like the Templeton Building renovation on East Burnside. "I’ve been involved in a lot of older buildings in a lot of capacities. I think I understand the capacities and challenges fairly well."

Workmen Temple rendering (Architectural Heritage Center)

"It’s been a tough journey for us. We’ve spent a year and a significant amount of money looking for ways to save it, Arthur added. "Whenever possible I like to keep older buildings intact and bring out their character. When we looked at that block, that was the goal and intent." He talked enthusiastically of traveling to New York City, for example, to look at buildings by the likes of Sir Norman Foster that had successfully combined new and old architecture.

But at a time when Portland has been awakening to the very real threat of a catastrophic earthquake, the developers realized they had "one of the tallest unreinforced masonry buildings in the city. The word seismic wasn’t a word when they built this," the developer said. "It was built to a different standard than what we want to see in the city today. And unlike say a three story building…it presents its own set of challenges."

Despite the de-listing from the city inventory and the architects' admissions that demolition may be inevitable, Arthur went to great lengths to emphasize that nothing has been decided, and that the 120-day waiting period that Restore Oregon went to City Council asking to be informed is something they would have agreed to even without the legal obligation. "There’s been no demo permit that’s been filed," Arthur said. "We’re still evaluating our opportunities when it comes to the Temple building. But one of the possibilities is it may have to come down."

If demolition were to happen, Arthur says his team would be "trying to create a win win no matter what the outcome became. At the very least, if it can’t be salvaged, we’d certainly explore all avenues of incorporating elements into a new design, or donating some of the materials and components." This was the only part of the conversation I rolled my eyes at. Demolishing a historic building is somehow okay if some of the parts and materials are donated? I don't think so. No absolution comes for good behavior in jail after a crime is committed.

"We haven’t made any final decision about anything. We’re still exploring options," Arthur said again. "As we’ve gone through this we’ve realized the challenges are greater than we thought. But we’re still working through what those figures might be."

I asked Arthur how much it would cost to restore the Workmen Temple if his team had all the capital they needed, but he was reluctant to answer, saying his team will have such figures in a couple of weeks. On one hand, it seems like they lack the proper figures to make a definitive decision about whether the buildings will come down, but they seem to have enough information to indicate demolition is the only option.

Arthur also made another point that about one-third of me agrees with. He called this block "a forgotten area of town," citing how it is so centrally located but feels relatively devoid of foot traffic and energy, not only because of the Temple being empty but the low-rise structures and a parking lot on the blog. "It’s a really important part of town we’d like to see vibrant again," the developer added. Of course he's right that foot traffic could be higher here, and no one wants to see an old building or any building sit vacant, especially when it's just blocks from City Hall and right in the middle of the downtown core.

But the implication here was that tearing down the Workmen Temple and the Albion would be better than letting either building sit vacant, and I find that self-serving and a faulty bit of logic. It conveniently ignores that a vacant Temple building can always still be restored, whereas once you tear it down it's gone for good. It certainly is true that a new hotel and office building on this block would add energy, but it would create a bigger problem than it solves: the eradication of historic architecture in a city that is losing its historic architecture at an alarming rate.

One interesting portion of the conversation with Arthur involved the question of whether it was worthwhile to preserve the Workmen Temple's facade if the owners gutted the interior. Arthur told me some had suggested that if none of the original interior remained then it wasn't worth it to preserve the exterior. I strongly disagree. Of course we wouldn't want the majority of our old buildings to lack historic interiors. When you restore the exterior only it's not a true renovation. But that doesn't mean it's not valid or worthwhile. Some of the best architecture is a hybrid of old an new, like tree sapling growing out of an old stump. It would be ideal to not only restore these buildings but preserve their interiors, but especially in the case of the Workmen Temple, it could be possible to build a new building in the shell of this old one and do something special. It would take a particularly talented architecture firm, of course, to do it right.

Ultimately this emerging story of a possible United Workmen Temple and Hotel Albion demolition is not really one of good-guy preservationists against bad-guy demolishing developers. The people who may ultimately demolish these structures would not be laughing all the way to the bank if they tore down these buildings. This is a time when Portland is seeing more and more projects developed by out-of-town developers and real estate investment trusts, and often these projects' developers, from Texas or San Diego or even Seattle, do not completely appreciate Portland's culture, urban fabric and values. These guys are longtime locals with, at least in Arthur's case, experience with and a genuine affection for old buildings and restorations.

Yet when good guys do bad things, it's still bad even if they're not. I hope for the sake of these old buildings and even for the sake of the developers that a compromise can be found: that either they can find a way to restore the buildings without losing money, or walk away from the project. But it's easy for me or any other outside observer to say when we're not the ones who have already gone all in financially. Even so, it would be a black mark for the city and for these developers' careers if the buildings come down, and while Ankrom Moisan may be a capable firm, I don't think there's anything they could design to replace this architecture that would be better or would justify what is being considered.

 

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Portland Building restoration: City Council does the right thing

Portland Building (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It was nearly two years ago, in January of 2014, that City Council members first considered a costly overhaul for the Portland Building.

One can't blame them for having been shocked that a building completed in 1982 was suffering such extensive structural and water damage, or that a combination of construction costs and temporary relocation for its approximately 1,300 municipal employees could push into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Which is why Council members like Dan Saltzman said at the time that "we should basically tear it down,” and Nick Fish called the building "a white elephant.”

Ultimately the decision to spare the Portland Building wasn't based on its design, by the late Michael Graves, having a prominent place in American architectural history as the first major work of postmodernism. It had nothing to do with the Portlandia statue sitting atop its western facade.

Instead, Council members approved a $195 million restoration because it's still cheaper than starting over with new construction. So while the approval was grudging, it was still approval. “This is a day we wish we didn’t have to be here for,” Hales said. “We wish it was built so well the first time, and that it hadn’t leaked. I wish we didn’t have to do this, but we do. I think all of us in a situation like this say ‘there’s got to be a cheaper alternative than that.’ But it appears that’s not the case.”

Besides the question of whether to renovate the Portland Building, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011, there has been the question of how much its unacceptably low natural light levels could be improved. Before last week's City Council vote, I happened to interview the city's chief administrative officer, Fred Miller, about the building for an upcoming article. He believes the light levels can be improved by changing some of the glazing - not the tiny cubed windows, but the other shaded facade glass.

"We are light deprived," Miller said. "There’s no doubt about that. And employees generally don’t like working in this building. It’s a place that people would say pretty consistently and unanimously needs to be improved as a workplace. The real issue for us, I think, in terms of light, is we have these big vertical windows on the outside that on the inside are blocked. Why they were blocked from the inside I don’t know. But if we were to unblock those, we'd have the opportunity to do something that gets much more light in.  I’ve heard we have something like 18 percent of the available light coming in, and we could get over 60."

Miller also noted that if the shaded Portland Building glass is made more transparent, the city's Historic Landmarks Commission may have some deliberations over the move, because it would noticeably change the exterior look the architecture. Yet when Graves visited Portland this time last year, not long before his death, he expressed approval for the change during an interview I did with him for Architect magazine. "Buildings all need care, and so does the Portland Building," he said of its need for renovation.

Portland Building (photo by Brian Libby)

There may also be opportunity to improve the building's interiors with more of an open-office plan; one interior designer recently described the offices' tall cubicles as almost like little buildings. Graves also recommended glassing in the building's ground-floor loggias, which would improve its presence at street level.

However much they were holding their noses, City Council clearly did the right thing here. No one blames them for expressing frustration over the high cost of fixing what should be a still-robust building after 33 years. But this is also a matter of coming full-circle with what the Portland Building always was: a building that, despite its architectural pedigree, was built on the cheap. To approve this $195 million restoration may be concerning given how the city has limited budget resources, but it's also an opportunity to demonstrate that Portland no longer does things on the cheap. To that end, I'd like to see Council take more of a prideful ownership of their decision. It may be spending a lot of money, but it's demonstrating that Portland understands the broader importance of investing in and preserving its most significant architecture.

The Portland building is just one of numerous local landmarks facing the dilemma of restoration or demolition.

Centennial Mills is already being partially demolished, and the plan to preserve its two largest structures is openly being reconsidered; the mayor even outright endorsed demolition because of the cost and because of the incredibly ill-advised decision to retain the Portland Police Bureau's riverfront horse paddock on the site. Honestly I'm not sure what to do with Centennial Mills given how deteriorated it all is, but it would be a blemish on Council and the city as well as a massive lost opportunity if we weren't able to renovate at least a building or two.

Veterans Memorial Coliseum recently saw a City-sponsored study confirm that the arena not only fills an important niche among central-city venues and will turn a profit upon even a modest restoration but that it such a move will have an economic impact worth multiple times the cost of a restoration. Its restoration costs are big too, but only a fraction of the Portland Building's renovation costs or the cost of a new arena. For the past six years I've been part of the group trying to save and restore Memorial Coliseum, so I'm admittedly biased. But then again I'm biased in one direction or the other about all local architecture. It's kind of the point.

The US Postal Service is also vacating its mid-20th century facility on NW Broadway, and while the architecture is handsome enough to merit consideration of renovation or a hybrid of old and new architecture, it will most likely be torn down. If so, none of us will shed tears. But again: the right design could transform what's there in a compelling and sustainable way.

There's also the question of the Multnomah County Courthouse, which will be vacated after the county builds a new downtown facility a few blocks away at the edge of the Hawthorne Bridge. It very well may be sold to the private sector and renovated into something like a new office space, but currently its future is very much in the air.

No one would ever argue that all old buildings or even all historic buildings can or should be saved. But if the post office must go, Centennial Mills and Memorial Coliseum are, like the Portland Building, architectural cornerstones of our city, exemplifying a range of styles and purposes and bringing distinction to each of their surrounding environments.

We may not choose to build a postmodern confection with small windows today, but if the interior can be improved we have to understand and embrace the Portland Building's significance. That's what City Council did last week by committing to its renovation. And it's what they should do with the other landmarks in need.

Recently Mayor Charlie Hales announced that he would not seek re-election in 2016, perhaps given an expected tough if not uphill battle against former state treasurer Ted Wheeler. Hales said he can't run for re-election and tackle the city's needs at the same time. He spoke of the affordable housing crisis as just one area that needs full-time attention. While there's no doubting the importance of that issue, or related concerns about poverty and homelessness, that doesn't mean we can't also devote urban renewal dollars and other funding sources to restoring the city's most important landmarks. Let Council be open about their concerns about cost, for that is part of the process. But as with the Portland Building, our city's leaders must also be custodians of the city's most important places. Restoring these buildings isn't just a grudging task, but a powerful and lasting opportunity.

Don't apologize for that, Mr. Hales. Own it.

 

 

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After city's Memorial Coliseum study released, a case for restoration

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Six years after the building was saved from demolition but three years after a planned restoration stalled in City Council, people often ask me: "What's happening with Memorial Coliseum?" And I don't blame them. It's a long saga that needs resolution.

Certainly City Council has a lot of projects needing money, such as the Portland Building and many miles of unpaved streets. But there is a strong economic case to be made for Memorial Coliseum, and the city's own numbers support this.

A little over a month ago, the city released the results of a study commissioned by the mayor's office to look at the cost of restoring Memorial Coliseum and what those investments would yield in terms of increased bookings and profit, as well as the cost of demolition or of converting the building to an open-air arena. Now it's arguably time to act on the results.

Restoration: Basic Numbers

The study came back with three basic levels of potential restoration. 

At the low end, at $35 million, is what's called "Essential Repairs and Replacement," which would address things like plumbing, bathrooms and a new scoreboard. In the middle was "Tenant/User Enhancements" at $61 million, with full life safety and ADA upgrades, window repair, new seats and concessions. Then there was "Strategic Market Enhancements" at $91 million, which did all this while also adding crucial enhancements like a loading dock, improved acoustics, and a curtain that could be open and closed regularly, revealing the incredible 360-degree view more than just once or twice a year.

The study also looked at a two other configurations that I'd characterize as wildcards of varying unlikeliness. One was said to have been put forward to woo Nike as a private partner: a "dynamic" floor that would allow room for an indoor track. Portland is hosting the 2016 World Indoor Track & Field Championships, so this would have allowed the event to move from the Oregon Convention Center to the Coliseum. But this option would have cost about $143 million, according to the study, and no partnership was forged. The study also looked at a $95 million option to become an open-air venue, with the glass walls removed. But unlike the other restoration options, all of which would have increased the number of events at the Coliseum, it was found to be able to only host about 57 events a year.

So that leaves us with the question of the $35, $61 and $91 million restoration costs, or spending $14 million for demolition.

Market Niche

First, let's remember that even in its disrepair, Veterans Memorial Coliseum continues to break even. That reflects something else the study affirmed: that Portland lacks another venue in the 6,000 to 8,000-seat range, which the Coliseum (now at just under 12,000 seats) would be upon a restoration. In other words, the building serves an important niche in the portfolio of local venues.

Take, for example, Cirque du Soleil's sold-out run of shows over two weeks in May of this year. As Rose Garden management has confirmed, Cirque du Soleil would not have come to Portland at all this year if the venue weren't available.

Economic Impact

$35 to $91 million is a lot of money, and city leaders are understandably cautious about committing that level of funds. As initial media reports by The Oregonian and the Portland Tribune pointed out, the profits that the Coliseum would generate would not be enough to recoup the costs of the restoration. 

Even so, restoring Memorial Coliseum at this range of costs is a bargain, and it's time City Council members acknowledged this.

For a city-owned venue like the Coliseum, the question is not just the profit that it would make, but instead the economic impact it would generate. "It can bring us an economic impact multiple times the [cost of the] renovation," a representative of the Portland Business Alliance told City Council back in 2012, when a $31 million renovation package was being considered.

Maybe the question shouldn't just be how much a Coliseum restoration will cost the city, but how much positive economic impact we have already lost in the three years since City Council declined to bring the restoration to a vote. It could already be paying economic dividends and bringing jobs.

Comparison to New Construction

Once we establish that the city needs a venue in this size range, it's also relevant to compare the Coliseum's projected restoration costs versus the cost of replacement - something neither The Oregonian nor the Portland Tribune did in their reporting.

New arenas of comparable size to the VMC have been built recently in numerous cities like Chicago, ranging from about $165 million to over $250 million. As it happens, restoring an existing city-owned asset does indeed pencil out in comparison to either a new-arena replacement or in light of economic impact on the city.

The Coliseum in 1960 (photo by Art Hupy, courtesy University of Washington)

A Simple Plan: Phased Restoration

Of course the question of how much to restore the Coliseum can't be separated from what the city can afford.

At the time of the proposed 2012 restoration package, Portland had about $22 million in Urban Renewal Area funds, and was counting on about $10 million from the Coliseum's anchor tenant, the Portland Winterhawks hockey franchise. Although that $22 million is increasingly being considered for other needs, it seems probable that the city, particularly if it was able to reach a new agreement with the Winterhawks, could put together the funds for the lower-level $35 million restoration outlined in the study. According to its findings, that would give the building an additional 20 years of life. And in this scenario, the city would only be spending about eight million than it would cost to demolish the building.

More importantly, investing $35 million could be packaged as simply the first phase of a multi-year, multiple-phase restoration. It would start to bring in the additional concerts and other events that would help the building pay for its repairs with added revenue. Once that happened, and as more city funds became available, we could commit at a later date to some of the additional enhancements that would bring in even more bookings.

Beyond dollars

Much as we have to make financially prudent decisions about city buildings, the case of the Coliseum is also a referendum on what kind of city Portland wants to be.

Last week at a joint meeting of the American Institute of Architects Historic Resources Committee and the organization's Urban Design Panel (the latter in collaboration with local American Planning Association and American Society of Landscape Architects chapters), longtime ZGF Architects principal and former City Club president Paddy Tillett said something important. In the recent past, he argued, when addressing the restoration needs of historic landmarks like City Hall or the Multnomah County Central Library, we never considered demolishing them. We had a conversation about how to fund their restorations, but we remained devoted to their preservation. It was a no-brainer.

One might argue that a city-owned and operated arena is less essential than a city hall or a library. But when one figures in the architectural significance of the building, as well as its status as a veterans memorial and its ongoing roles such as a concert venue and the originating point of the Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade, and the size niche it fills amongst local venues, the case becomes stronger.

Architecturally, the Coliseum is incredible. Equivalent in size to three city blocks, it stands on just four columns. Its concrete seating bowl sits completely detached from the glass box surrounding it. It's nearly the only arena in the world with a 360-degree view to the outside. I've watched the sun set over the entire downtown skyline from my Memorial Coliseum seat, and it's among the most breathtaking architectural experiences I've ever had. The building was designed by one of the 20th century's most important American architecture firms - Skidmore, Owings and Merrill - at the height of their design prowess, with legendary architects like Gordon Bunshaft and Myron Goldsmith contributing. Although some still find it strange to think of a work of modernist architecture being historic, it's absolutely true. And the public has increasingly developed a taste for mid-20th century modernism, from the Eames Chair to the soon-to-be-renovated TWA terminal at JFK airport. The Coliseum was thusly added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.

Centerpiece of a Burgeoning District

We also have to look at the Coliseum in an urban planning context. With changes coming to the Interstate 5 interchange and valuable central-city real estate in play at a time the city is booming, the Coliseum can become a centerpiece of what is destined to become a kind of second downtown in the years ahead. With a new streetcar line and major parcels like the Portland Public Schools site waiting to be redeveloped, the area bordering the Rose Quarter east of the Broadway Bridge will over the years ahead give way to high-density development, as we are already seeing in the adjacent Lloyd District and Convention Center area.

The City can take action both toward addressing the Rose Quarter's urban design failures and help the Coliseum itself by redeveloping the two arenas' parking garages, which are structurally equipped to withstand buildings being built on top of them. Doing so would raise funds that could contribute to the Coliseum's restoration. There is also similar opportunity with the riverfront parcel directly west of the Coliseum across Interstate Avenue, which is currently being used as a parking lot for Moda Center employees. A restored Coliseum could be the cultural and architectural centerpiece of a new high-density area with the energy and foot traffic of the most successful such transformation of the past decade: the Brewery Blocks and the adjacent Gerding Theater (renovated from the historic Portland Armory).

But don't take my word for it. Look at The Oregonian's recent editorial arguing for a Coliseum restoration, or the recent op-ed in the Tribune. Or consider the on-record support for investing in the building that has come from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the US Green Building Council, the American Institute of Architects, or the aforementioned Portland Business Alliance. The world's best cities, the ones people want to visit and invest in, continually renew and re-imagine their great places. If Portland lacks the rich heritage of some European or Asian cities, it's therefore all the more important to preserve the signature buildings and spaces we do have. And with the city trying to establish itself as a design and sustainability capitol, to do anything but a restoration would go against the values.

If you'd like to make your voice heard, the mayor's office has created an online page for the public to weigh in on the Coliseum's fate as part of a two-month online comment period.

[In continuing full disclosure, I am the co-chair of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum. Check out our video below or visit our website to learn more.]

 

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Will Centennial Mills be the next historic landmark demolished?

Centennial Mills, 2013 (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

As demolition begins this month on the Portland GasCo building, earning ire from preservationists, another century-old structure along the Willamette may be facing the wrecking ball: Centennial Mills.

In the August issue of the NW Examiner, Allan Classen reported that Mayor Charlie Hales now favors demolishing the entire structure. Hales’ aide, Jillian Detweiler, delivered that message last month to the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, which has long advocated that at least some of the structures from what was initially an 11-building development be preserved. Detweiler cited a $16 million shortfall between the $20 million in River District Urban Renewal Area funds and the $36 million requested to restore the site by Harsch Investment Properties, the firm chosen by the Portland Development Commission as developer two years ago.

Past mayors, in trying to preserve Centennial Mills, had simply “kicked the can down the road” Detweiler was quoted as saying in Classen's article. By calling for demolition of these historic early 20th century industrial buildings to be leveled, she added, Hales was showing responsibility.

Demolition crews have already been busy since March tearing down much of the multi-building complex, leaving all but two of the larger structures. Since 2000, the Portland Development Commission has controlled Centennial Mills, and some have criticized how little the agency did over the past 15 years to limit deterioration. When I toured the property late last year for a CityLab article on efforts to save the major buildings there, large portions of water-damaged upstairs floors were marked with spray paint to warn of potential cave-ins. Raccoon tracks abounded, and visitors had to wear face masks.

When I interviewed Harsch's Jordan Schnitzer back then for the CityLab article, he argued that neglect in the past 14 years (since PDC's takeover) had done more damage to Centennial Mills than the previous 90 or so years had. So in a certain respect, Hales may simply be acknowledging reality there.

Recently I spoke by phone with Schnitzer, who expressed his flexibility but also took the city to task for backtracking.

"After roughly 18 months of planning, I presented the mayor seven different plans of potential redevelopment on the Centennial Mills site, ranging from doing nothing to a $200 million redevelopment," Schnitzer explained. "He asked me what I thought. I said, 'You know Mr. Mayor, growing up in Portland, there wasn’t much happening down in the Northwest waterfront area, except industry. Now there’s no shortage of apartments, office, retail. What there’s a shortage of is open space.’ I said, ‘I think we should preserve whatever buildings we can preserve, but the rest should be public space.’ At the time he said it should be a balance of private and public space. So that’s what we presented to the PDC almost a year ago in October."

Schnitzer believes part of the problem is the Portland Police Bureau's horse stables, the Mounted Patrol Unit, adjacent to the Centennial Mills complex. Since the initial agreement to develop the site, " I think the city has found itself in a quandary about the MPU," the developer and philanthropist explained. "They should have known how much it would cost to move it. But in the RFP for Centennial Mills that we responded to almost four years ago, it clearly stated it would be gone, and that we should approach it that way. We did everything PDC asked us to. Now that the city has decided the MPU may stay, it totally screws up the plans that we’ve come up with."

Centennial Mills (photo by Brian Libby)

Yet Schnitzer says he can roll with the changes. "Now the mayor is going back to what my initial recommendation was, which was maximize the open space. In terms of being supportive of this new approach, absolutely."

"The latest idea," Schnitzer added, "is to form a steering committee I’d be part of along with a distinguished broad-based group of community leaders, to determine the best use and open space. Whether any of the buildings can be preserved as time goes on that gets to be more costly and therefore less likely. Who knows what it may come up with? Maybe some buildings will still be preserved. Maybe they’ll be preserved differently. Maybe not."

"I think it’s a shame whenever historic buildings are not preserved," Schnitzer concluded, "but there’s always a balance between cost and legacy. And I’m not in a position to control all the city budgets. If I were, maybe we’d preserve a few more."

It's one thing if there is a wide gap between the $20 million the city has on offer and the $36 million Schnitzer says is necessary. But couldn't $20 million still go a long way toward preserving some or at least a building or two at Centennial Mills?

All that said, the city and Mayor Hales are facing a crisis with several historic and architecturally significant structures needing attention and funds at the same time, such as the Portland Building and Veterans Memorial Coliseum. It's true that not all old buildings can be preserved, either because of deterioration, or a lack of funds, or both. Centennial Mills, or what's left of it, is certainly in bad shape.

It's a bit surprising how willing Harsch seems to be to go along with demolishing everything, even if the company had always advocated for some open space to be included. When I interviewed Schnitzer last year for the CityLab article, he spoke ambitiously of bringing in world-class design talent like Frank Gehry and Maya Lin to contribute, and the possibility of adding new buildings or even a pedestrian bridge over Naito Parkway to connect the Mills with the Pearl District. He also seemed to indicate that if necessary, the Schnitzer family might be willing to dip into its family fortune to contribute to a good solution. All the while, there did exist this gap between what the city was offering and what Harsch said was needed. But straight from Gehry and Lin to a pile of rubble and no complaints?

Maybe something Portland Development Commission project manager Bruce Wood told me last December for the CityLab article was telling. "It's run like a family enterprise, and they have a different metric," Wood, who worked at Harsch in the early 1990s, said of the company. "It's about art and legacy. Jordan is very charismatic, and he's at his very best when he's involved in civic causes because he loves that stuff. And this project needs something like that, because if you look at the numbers … it would never happen. This project is that complicated. It needs somebody who's going to put a little more into it."

Perhaps Harsch felt like ultimately the city was trying to squeeze the company to spend a little more than was prudent or fair without remaining committed as a strong, unflinching public partner. Or maybe the circumstances simply changed, or it became apparent that even $20 million wouldn't save a single building. Perhaps this sad Centennial Mills story says something about the relative lack of private-sector wealth and philanthropy in Portland. I think in larger, more affluent cities, it's possible more would step forward to save a historic structure.

No matter who is most directly to blame for a potential Centennial Mills demolition, it's clear that to let the entire complex succumb to the wrecking ball is not just an opportunity lost or a grim but prudent acknowledgement of financial realities. It's a failure of leadership: not simply on the part of the current mayor or the public-private partnership that came about to save the Mills most recently, but the succession of people who got in the way. For the past 15 years, Centennial Mills has been city-owned and waiting to be renovated. Had we started back then, much of the architecture could have been saved, and today we would have a successful mixed-use complex that celebrated and embodied Portland's heritage. It's true that in 2008 PDC awarded a contract to California-based LAB Holding to renovate and transform Centennial Mills, and that the recession seems to have doomed that effort. But the reality is still that our own inaction and our deference to a horse paddock occupying prime riverfront land slowly destroyed the complex.

No one is yet saying that the entirety of Centennial Mills will be destroyed. Maybe this mayoral call for outright demolition is just part of an ongoing behind-the-scenes negotiation over a new public-private partnership. But at the very least, after numerous past announcements that progress was being made, Centennial Mills' future is looking bleaker than ever before. And if this grim scenario plays out, it won't be a matter of kicking the can down the road: it will be a matter of obliterating the can. And that's not a legacy anyone should want.

 

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NW Natural beginning demolition of landmark GasCo Building

Portland GasCo building (image via An Eccentric Field Guide)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It looks as if one of Portland's most beloved old buildings has reached the end of its lifespan.

NW Natural is beginning demolition this week on the Portland GasCo (or Portland Gas and Coke) building, a circa-1913 administrative structure on its Willamette River site near Linnton and the St. Johns Bridge. According to Melissa Moore, a spokesman for the company, demolition will take six to eight weeks.

"You might recall over the past two years that we met with a very nice community group and gave them the chance to raise the money to save the building, since we couldn’t charge our ratepayers for a non-utility item like that," Moore wrote by email. "Unfortunately despite their best efforts, they could only raise $4,000. So they told us in February that they would stop the effort. There is one remaining committee member, Scott Becker, who still wants to try to save it, but we’ve let him know multiple times that we are moving forward with demolition."

Becker, by the way, has a different version of the story, acknowledging that some but not all of the Save the Portland GasCo Building members abandoned the effort, but by no means had the group or its efforts effort ended. 

Indeed, it would have been a tall order to raise in less than a year the $1.55-2.05 million that NW Natural was asking for. It's also true that the site, including the ground underneath the GasCo, was contaminated, and that NW Natural has been working for many years to clean it up. NW Natural clearly felt that it was obligated to continue with the cleanup, and that the GasCo building stood in the way.

Portland GasCo building (image via Friends of the GasCo)

Even so, the company's behavior was disappointing even if it wasn't surprising. Even if one acknowledges and accepts the logic of the company's unwillingness to charge rate-payers for GasCo preservation, and even if one gives credence to their openness in meeting with preservationists, it still seems like the company could have been more accommodating and creative about saving a building that people love, or at least preserving it as a ruin. This wasn't just an albatross for them; it was an opportunity to do something special.

I've also yet to hear NW Natural say that the land underneath the GasCo building is contaminated, and I've yet to hear that they have another building planned for the site.

And make no mistake: however long this building has sat empty, and no matter how unsuccessful a group of grassroots preservationists were in meeting the corporation's gargantuan financial demands, this is a work of architecture that has long occupied a place in the cultural imagination. It's a building that people loved, even if only from afar. When I first wrote about the GasCo building being threatened a year or so ago, for example, the post garnered the most visits in the 10-year history of the blog. The building has inspired artists like musician-author Colin Meloy, the Decembrists frontman who made it a veritable character (and cover art) in his children's book series with wife Carson Ellis, The Wildwood Chronicles. For years I've been receiving emails and questions about this building.

No one was ever asking NW Natural to renovate the building and make it habitable again. As Moore noted in her email, it had been abandoned for decades and it would have been almost impossible to get this decayed structure suitable for occupation again. Even to earthquake-protect it would be silly. But preserving the building as a ruin, as organizations like Restore Oregon called for, seemed like a plausible solution. After all, it had already been happening for decades. I'll bet NW Natural's contamination cleanup could have happened around and under the building if the company had truly been committed to the idea of preservation. After all, the company is spending all those years and all that money to clean up that land. Why not make it a park someday, with the GasCo ruins in the middle? But perhaps it's asking a corporation too much to be creative like this. I doubt many other similar companies would have behaved differently.

The GasCo building was on my mind over two weeks in August as I traveled through England. Many of the greatest and most inspiring works of architecture I saw there were ruins. On the Yorkshire coast, for example, I visited the stunning Whitby Abbey, its architecture dating to the 13th century. On a high cliff overlooking the town, it continues to inspire as it has done for centuries. Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula while living in Whitby, even used the abbey ruins as the setting for the opening of the novel as the vampire comes ashore.

Whitby Abbey (photo by Brian Libby)

In another nearby coastal town, Scarborough, I visited the ruins of Scarborough Castle, which dates to the 12th century and also sits on a high cliff overlooking the town. The settlement there even dates back to Roman times some 2,000 years ago. It is this sense of the continuity of history, as well as the compelling frozen drama of these remains, that makes them worth preserving.

The Portland GasCo building's heritage was a tiny fraction compared to those English ruins. Yet because Portland lacks that long history (at least as a white European settlement), it is all the more important that we do protect what heritage we do have. That's what the GasCo's admirers knew in their bones, and that NW Natural's leadership either didn't understand or refused to acknowledge or at least act on. They were caretakers of a part of Portland's cultural heritage, and while they offered to comply if someone else stepped up, their role could have been greater. I hope if any of their leadership reads this post, they will step away from thinking of this incident as PR damage control and start looking in the mirror, as we all should.

Scott Ray Becker, last of the GasCo preservationists (image via Becker)

By no means can we solely blame NW Natural. To save the GasCo building, we needed everyone to step up. The community could have done more to rally and raise the funds to pay the building's quasi-ransom. Organizers of the Save the GasCo group could have kept fighting instead of all but one of them giving up over six months ago. I certainly could have done more to raise awareness and take a stand. (After all, a Willamette Week headline last year asked, 'Can Brian Libby save the Gas and Coke Building?' Clearly the answer was no.) Perhaps fighting to save Memorial Coliseum for six years has humbled me, or at least taken away some of my energy for these kinds of fights. Even so, no one person can change the course of an owner determined to demolish.

Certainly NW Natural could have done more too. Even if one concedes that it was a reasonable stance not to burden rate-payers with GasCo costs, the company could have been more active in trying to be a partner in raising the money. Instead, they gave a massive figure to the preservationists and pretty much dared them to try and raise it. Now, they're free to raze the building instead - and a beloved part of Portland's history as well.

Shame on them, and shame on all of us.

 

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